Oxford Textbook of Public Health Palliative Care

by Julian Abel (Editor), Allan Kellehear (Editor)

Overview

Death, dying, loss, and care giving are not just medical issues, but societal ones.

Palliative care has become increasingly professionalised, focused around symptom science. With this emphasis on minimizing the harms of physical, psychological, and spiritual stress, there has been a loss of how cultures and communities look after their dying, with the wider social experience of death often sidelined in the professionalisation and medicalisation of care. However, the people we know and love in the places we know and love make up what matters most for those undergoing the experiences of death, loss, and care giving.

Over the last 25 years the theory, practice, research evidence base, and clinical applications have developed, generating widespread adoption of the principles of public health approaches to palliative care. The essential principles of prevention, harm reduction, early intervention, and health and wellbeing promotion can be applied to the universal experience of end of life, irrespective of disease or diagnosis. Compassionate communities have become a routine part of the strategy and service development in palliative care, both within the UK and internationally.

The Oxford Textbook of Public Health Palliative Care provides a reframing of palliative care, bringing together the full scope of theory, practice, and evidence into one volume. Written by international leaders in the field, it provides the first truly comprehensive and authoritative textbook on the subject that will help to further inform developments in this growing specialty.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198862994
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	07/30/2022
Series:	Oxford Textbooks in Palliative Medicine
Pages:	324
Product dimensions:	11.00(w) x 8.82(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Julian Abel, Director, Compassionate Communities, UK,Allan Kellehear, Clinical Professor, College of Nursing and Health Sciences, University of Vermont, USA

Dr Julian Abel became a consultant in palliative care in 2001. He was the chair of the organising committee for the 4th International Public Health and Palliative Care Conference in 2015 and was Vice President of Public Health Palliative Care International. Since 2016 he has worked with Frome Medical Practice in Somerset in developing a new model of primary care combined with compassionate communities. He is co-author of The Compassion Project which describes the background to the Frome Project and the implications of compassion in medicine and in society at large. Along with Dr Kellehear and Dr Catherine Millington Sanders he formed Compassionate Communities UK, of which he is Director. The charity has been formed to develop broader roll-out of compassionate communities in both primary care and end of life care. Dr Abel also runs a podcast, Survival of the Kindest, about compassion and its absence.

Dr Allan Kellehear is Clinical Professor in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences at the University of Vermont, USA. He was formerly 50th Anniversary Professor (End of Life Care) at the University of Bradford in the UK. He has previously held chairs in social sciences, public health, or palliative care at Middlesex, Bath, Tokyo, and La Trobe Universities. He has held honorary professorships in Austria, Australia, Canada, China, Ireland, Japan, United Kingdom, and the USA. He is internationally acknowledged to be the leading academic proponent of health-promoting palliative care and the compassionate communities/cities movement.

Table of Contents

Part 1 : The Case for Public Health Palliative Care1. Demographic and Epidemiological Challenges, Julia Verne2. International Palliative Care Policy, Philip Larkin3. The Social Nature of Dying and The Social Model of Health, Allan Kellehear4. Palliative Care: The New Essentials, Julian Abel, Allan Kellehear, and Aliki KarapliagouPart 2 : Basic Concepts and Theory5. A History of Public Health Palliative Care, Bruce Rumbold6. The 'New' Public Health: A social model of care, Mark Spreckley and Allan Kellehear7. Health and Wellbeing, Julian Abel8. Prevention and Harm-Reduction, Libby Sallnow9. Early Intervention, John Rosenberg10. Participatory Relations, Kerrie NoonanPart 3 : Basic Practice Methods11. Community Development - Compassionate communities, Manjula Patel and Kerrie Noonan12. Compassionate Cities: A social ecology at the end of life, Gail Wilson, Emilio Herrera, Silvia Librada, and Allan Kellehear13. Developing End of Life Literacy through Public Education, Rebecca M. Patterson and Mark A. Hazelwood14. Health Policy, Katherine Pettus and Pati Dzotsenidze15. Health Promotion and Palliative care, Andrea Grindrod16. Clinical Practice Methods with Community Resources, Helen Kingston, Catherine Millington-Sanders, and Julian Abel17. Digital Applications and Public Health Palliative Care, Jason Mills and Shyla MillsPart 4 : Population based approaches18. Health Services Redesign, Emma Hodges and Nikki Archer19. Public Health Approaches to Bereavement and Loss, Samar Aoun and Bruce Rumbold20. Public Health Palliative Care, Equity-Oriented Care, and Structural Vulnerability, Holly Prince, Kathy Kortes-Miller, Kelli Stajduhar, and Denise Marshall21. Public Health Palliative Care Design and Practice in Low- and Middle-Income Countries, Suresh Kumar and Kamala RamakrishnanPart 5 : Evidence-Base22. The Evidence for the Effectiveness of a Public Health Palliative Care Approach, Joseph Sawyer and Libby Sallnow23. The Evidence for the Importance of Naturally Occurring Networks, Rosemary Leonard and Debbie Horsfall24 Complexities and Challenges in a Public Health Palliative Care Research, Steven Vanderstichelen and Luc Deliens.25. Economic Perspectives on Public Health Approaches to Palliative Care, Charles NormandPart 6: Education and Training26 Pedagogic Approaches for Professional Learning, Mary Hodgson and Heather Richardson.27. Public Health Palliative Care Education: Children and Schools, Sally Paul28. Specialist Training: The UK Palliative Medicine Curriculum, Polly Edmonds29. Using and Building Toolkits to Support Community Action, Bonnie Tompkins and Dan MalleckPart 7: Conclusion and AppendicesConclusion, Julian Abel & Allan KellehearAppendix A: The Compassionate City Charter- A Charter of ActionsAppendix B: Useful Organisational Links

Editorial Reviews

Reviewer: Rebecca Gagne-Henderson, PhD, MSN/FNP(Connecticut Hospice and Palliative Care Organization)
Description: This book is important for those looking to broaden the scope of the traditional view of palliative care. In its relatively short history, palliative care has concentrated on clinical aspects. This eye-opening book speaks to those who struggle to approach palliative care at the community and public health levels. The description of public health as more than safety, sanitation, and epidemiology is equally enlightening. It rightfully includes community health, which has been the purview of nursing for the past 100 years.
Purpose: The purpose of the book is to broaden the scope of palliative care as a clinical model to include a community perspective. It provides a framework for advocates to build grassroots programs to benefit populations that typically do not have access to palliative care or hospice. The book describes palliative care from a holistic approach, which has been fading from palliative care as it moves from an interdisciplinary model to a medical model. The book meets its objectives fearlessly and is a much-needed addition to the lexicon of palliative care.
Audience: This book should be required reading for physicians in fellowship programs and nurses in palliative care to remind them of the purpose of their work. It should also be required reading for social workers, as they will inevitably work with the seriously ill and dying at some point in their career. Healthcare advocates, community workers, and hospice leaders will benefit from this book to gain a fresh perspective on developing innovative programs to reach the underserved. The authors are well versed in both palliative care and public health.
Features: Much of the book illustrates the importance and need for this new perspective. These sections describe how this approach addresses population health and health disparities. One chapter is dedicated to the challenges of demographic issues from a local and global perspective. The book discusses the differences and similarities between health and well-being. It also describes the traditional view of public health and introduces an expanded view incorporating a community health approach. One of the most critical chapters addresses the societal nature of dying and the social model of health. A public health perspective on palliative care is also necessary, owing to the modern medical model distorting our Western society's ability to care for the dying. A public health approach is required to re-educate, re-establish, and reinforce our confidence in caring for the dying. This will enable a change in mindset and promote a reclamation of death as a natural process within the domain of the family and community, rather than a medicalized process. One chapter provides an overview of "The New Essentials," and describes the components of palliative care. This is an important chapter for public health students unfamiliar with the field. It also describes the civic component of palliative care and how palliative care clinicians support the community.
Assessment: This new approach is inspiring and necessary, owing to increased medical technology, which distorts the ability of societies to care for the dying. Palliative care workers in the community who use the methods described in this book may help re-establish a comfort with dying that has been lost over the past few generations. However, the book also speaks to clinical models related to death. There is an undeniable overlap between medicine and public health, especially regarding palliative care. These models and theories are essential when considering the pedagogy of clinical and public health efforts. The book is decidedly Eurocentric, except for some mention of Australia. The data presented could be broader to reflect an international audience, though the content is generalizable. One drawback is the book's temporal discussion of COVID-19, which is now historical in context. This content now appears dated. It is appropriate to address as a public health book, but only because the pandemic drew attention to the greater need for palliative care. This book is an important work that moves past the previous efforts of educating clinicians. It is forward-looking and speaks a great deal about how to build networks in the community. It shows a practical way to engage the community in their own care to prevent harm and seek hospice and palliative care earlier. It empowers the community and invites clinicians to engage with one another in ways that have not occurred widely in the past.

Doody's Review Service