“But we’re already doing it!” : Examining conceptual blurring between health promotion and palliative care

Attempts by scholars and palliative care organisations to integrate health promotion and palliative care demonstrate a growing awareness of the conceptual congruence between these two fields. Yet it is increasingly evident that this congruence has also brought with it a lack of clarity at individual and organisational levels of the key concepts underpinning HPPC.

A number of examples demonstrate that this conceptual blurring leads to a sense amongst practitioners that HPPC is already being done; when the presence of elements of health promotion in end of life care is viewed as the successful implementation of HPPC. For example, health promotion is commonly understood as health education (just another service, rather than engagement); death education can be reduced to providing information about palliative care resources; community development to community based service provision; and education to telling.

This reveals a challenge for the advocates of HPPC to address misconceptions of what health promotion is and what a public health approach to palliative care entails. How does the conceptual blurring between health promotion and palliative care impact upon this? In this paper, I draw on the scholarly work to date and examples from practice, to explore how the integration of HPPC relies upon a whole-of-organisation approach, if it is to counter the perception that HPPC is merely synonymous with many of the existing elements of palliative care practice.