WA7 Refining and sharing our methods - how to research the public health approach to palliative care?

According to the WHO, public health has a mandate to: 1) Assess and monitor the health of communities and populations to identify health problems and priorities, 2) assure that all populations have access to appropriate and cost– effective care, 3) devise public policies and actions to solve identified local and national health problems and priorities. In line with this, public health has increasingly provided a framework for descriptive and epidemiological palliative care research, related to the first two mandates. Demographic, epidemiological, and sociological changes are increasingly asking for a broader public health approach to palliative care research, one that incorporates the principles of health promotion. This workshop will be led by an international collaborative group interested in how these different mandates relate to one another in developing a public health and palliative care research agenda. The first presentation will focus on the more traditional public health and epidemiological research approach and how it has addressed some public health challenges in palliative care but has missed or ignored others. The second presentation will focus on the New Public Health approach and how this has been translated into research evaluating health promoting palliative care and related interventions, but faces the major challenge of developing an appropriate thorough methodological and evidence base. The presentations will examine the contribution of each tradition and determine how they can inform and strengthen one another. The workshop will conclude with a panel discussion to engage participants to develop a research agenda for the future.