From concept to care: enabling community care through a health promoting palliative care approach

The aim of this paper was to implement and evaluate health promoting palliative care projects through partnerships formed within local communities in the Hume Region,Victoria, Australia. Health promoting palliative care is a public health approach to palliative care developed by Kellehear (1999). This article reports on a project in which the Hume Regional Palliative Care Service in Victoria, Australia sought to implement the approach through partnerships formed with a range of community groups and service agencies in their region. Funding was provided over a two-year period by the 'Caring Communities Program' of the Australian Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing. It was hoped that the project overall would increase community capacity to participate in the care of members of the community living with dying and loss. The project developed implementation strategies and health promotion project guidelines, as outlined below. During the two-year period the palliative care service entered in a number of new partnerships with community groups and other health services. At first much of the initiative in forming these partnerships came from the palliative care service, but as the project progressed the initiative came increasingly from community partners.