Palliative care for older people A public health perspective

Current projections indicate that by 2050 the number of people aged over 80 years old will rise to 395 million and that by this date 25-30% of people over the age of 85 will show some degree of cognitive decline. Palliative care for older people: A public health perspective provides a comprehensive account of the current state of palliative care for older people worldwide and illustrates the range of concomitant issues that, as the global population ages, will ever more acutely shape the decisions of policy-makers and care-givers. The book begins by outlining the range of policies towards palliative care for older people that are found worldwide. It follows this by examining an array of socio-cultural issues and palliative care initiatives, from the care implications of health trajectories of older people to the spiritual requirements of palliative care patients, and from the need to encourage compassion towards end-of-life care within communities to the development of care pathways for older people. Palliative care for older people: A public health perspective is a valuable resource for professionals and academics in a range of healthcare and public health fields to understand the current state of policy work from around the world. The book also highlights the social-cultural considerations that influence the difficult decisions that those involved in palliative care face, not least patients themselves, and offers examples of good practice and recommendations to inspire, support, and direct healthcare policy and decision-making at organisational, regional, national and international levels.

Lieve Van den Block, MSc, PhD, is Professor of communication and education in family medicine at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. She also works as postdoctoral researcher of the Fund for Scientific Research Flanders working in the End-of-Life Care Research Group of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Ghent University in Belgium where she chairs the research on palliative care for older people. She holds a Master in Clinical Psychology and a PhD in Medical Social Sciences. She coordinates the EURO SENTI-MELC study, a study occupied with monitoring end-of-life care using sentinel networks of general practitioners in Europe, and is executive coordinator of EU FP7 EURO IMPACT (2010-2014) project, a Marie Curie Initial Training Network on palliative care, and coordinator of EUFP7 PACE on Effectiveness of Palliative Care for Older People (2014-2019). Gwenda Albers MSc, PhD, is postdoctoral research fellow on the EU FP7 EURO-IMPACT project at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels. She has a background in Health Sciences and has been involved in palliative care research since 2008. Her research has been focused on quality of life, dignity, dementia and palliative care for older people. She has been working on several projects (a.o. EU FP7 PRISMA), was a visiting researcher at King's College Cicely Saunders Institute in London and obtained her PhD in 2012 from the VU University Amsterdam. Sandra Martins Pereira, MSc, PhD, is postdoctoral research fellow on the EU FP7 EURO-IMPACT project at the VU University medical center, EMGO Institute for Health and Care Research in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She obtained her PhD and MSc in Bioethics, and obtained Post-Graduation in Palliative Care, Graduation in Educational Sciences and in Nursing. She is an integrated member of the Office for Research in Bioethics at the Institute of Bioethics, Catholic University of Portugal. Bregje Onwuteaka-Philipsen, PhD, is professor of End-of-life Research at the VU university medical center, EMGO Inst