Integrating Palliative Care Into Global Health Initiatives: Opportunities and Challenges

The landscape of global health is quickly evolving as international health care systems and nursing organizations are developing solutions to dilemmas that face the global village and planet as a whole. Nurses remain key players in advancing all major transnational initiatives. Despite admirable efforts by many governing bodies to unify globalized health improvement, palliative care as a specialty has often not been included as a priority for health research, education, practice, or policy. The purpose of this article is to identify both opportunities and challenges for nurses to integrate palliative care into established global health initiatives and the emerging professional organizational movements impacting the future development of both global and palliative nursing. Partnerships across disciplines, with policy makers, and in research, education, and practice will assist in the creation of new knowledge and in continuing to establish the evidence-based value of palliative care on a global scale.