4th International Public Health & Palliative Care Conference, 11-16th May 2015, Bristol
Amongst the many innovative and inspiring examples of public health approaches to end of life care from around the world, during the afternoon of Thursday May 14th, Professor Kellehear will talk about the Compassionate City Charter. This is a great opportunity to hear about how diverse public health approaches to palliative and end of life care can be applied on a practical basis. He will discuss the rationale that clearly shows why we need to extend and change the model of professionalised palliative care into one that sees end of life as part and parcel of life as a whole, with a need for professional service and communities to work in partnership.
Compassionate Cities are communities that recognize that all natural cycles of sickness and health, birth and death, and love and loss occur everyday within the orbits of its institutions and regular activities. A compassionate city is a community that recognizes that care for one another at times of crisis and loss is not simply a task solely for health and social services but is everyone’s responsibility.
The charter is made up of a series of principles which cover a broad range of public health approaches to palliative and end of life care. It can be applied to cities and communities alike. By adoption of these principles, state institutions, workplaces, care organisations, the charitable sector and communities themselves can work together to make caring at end of life into bereavement, everyone’s responsibility, finding practical ways to help on a variety of different levels. .
The Compassionate City Charter is part of the Public Health Toolkit
The toolkit covers the theory and practice in end of life care and is a joint document from Public Health England and the National Council for Palliative Care, written by Professor Kellehear and Aliki Karapliagkou. The National Council for Palliative Care are running a workshop during the conference on the Dying Well Community Charter. This links together application of public health approaches to the newly formed National Pathfinder Pilots.
Allan is an inspired and impassioned speaker. He is known for his ability to question the status quo and challenge us to think differently and more broadly about what we do. He has been an advocate of public health approaches to end of life care for more than 15 years, with extensive experience of running programmes in a number of different countries. He has been invited to speak the world over on this topic.
The quality of abstracts submitted has been extremely high. The organising committee believe that the conference will be a quantum leap in understanding and using public health approaches at end of life, with practical examples from all over the world of how this has been implemented. Over the coming weeks, we will regularly review some of the abstracts to give people a flavour of what is looking to be an outstanding, inspiring and exciting conference.
To find out more and register for the conference click here
