Globalizing Palliative Care

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Palliative care services are increasingly emerging in diverse cultural settings around the globe. Given the large cultural diversity in end-of-life care practices, we ask: How do global palliative care practices translate to various cultural contexts? How do they impact local notions of death and dying? And how, in turn, do culturally diverse practices of end-of-life care shape the practice of palliative care? This project studies the globalization and cultural mediation of palliative care practices, policies and discourses. Our ethnographic research focuses on three countries that are currently building a system of professional palliative care provisions:

Palliative care services are increasingly emerging in diverse cultural settings around the globe. Given the large cultural diversity in end-of-life care practices, we ask: How do global palliative care practices translate to various cultural contexts?

How do they impact local notions of death and dying? And how, in turn, do culturally diverse practices of end-of-life care shape the practice of palliative care?

This project studies the globalization and cultural mediation of palliative care practices, policies and discourses. Our ethnographic research focuses on three countries that are currently building a system of professional palliative care provisions:
Icon Indonesia_128x128px_web
Indonesia
India
Brazil

In Indonesia palliative care is most developed in a few large tertiary hospitals, but is currently including a growing number professional initiatives across the archipelago. Ethnographic research will focus mainly on Jakarta and Banda Aceh.

India has multiple promising palliative care programmes and initiatives, amongst others a successful community-based palliative care system in Kerala. Research for this project focuses on end-of-life care in the capital of India: New Delhi.

In Brazil, palliative care units and initiatives are concentrated in urban centers and mostly located in hospitals. The research will both take place in institutions and follow families in the home setting. Fieldwork will be carried out in the metropolitan context of Sao Paulo and smaller towns in southern Brazil.

News & Events

Lecture: When Hospice isn’t a ‘Choice’

February 6, 2023 No Comments

In the talk “When Hospice Isn’t a ‘Choice’: Disregard, Care and End of Life on the American Periphery” Dr. Devin Flaherty discusses the peculiar role of hospice care on the island of St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands—and its tragic, deleterious consequences for older adults nearing the end of life there. This talk takes place on Tuesday 28th of February 2023 and is organized by the Globalizing Palliative Care research project and the Leiden University Medical Anthropology Network (LUMAN) and hosted at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology. 

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Institute of Cultural Anthropology 

and Development Sociology

 

Leiden University
Wassenaarseweg 52
2333 AK Leiden
The Netherlands
a.samuels@fsw.leidenuniv.nl
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