Power, privilege and provocation : public health palliative care today

In the 34 years since the release of WHO's The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion1 and the 21 years since Allan Kellehear's seminal text Health Promoting Palliative Care2 was published, Public Health Palliative Care (PHPC) has established itself as a significant movement of social and healthcare approaches to support dying, caring and grieving. Viewing the community as an equal partner in providing quality health care at the end of life, PHPC challenges ingrained hierarchies of professional power; contests established structures of privilege; and provokes services to reorient toward respecting and working with whole communities, whilst urging communities and service providers to build death literacy.3 This obliges parties to address power and privilege, whilst continuing to progress optimal clinical practices and robust community participation in dying, caring and grieving.