NIH Support for Palliative Care Research: A Scoping Review of Awards and Publications 2014-2024

Palliative care research encompasses varied topics, disciplines, settings, populations, and diseases. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is a major funder of palliative care research and researcher career development.

To characterize 10 years of NIH-supported palliative care research and identify research gaps and opportunities that could improve access, use, and quality of palliative care for individuals with serious illness.

We used keywords to identify new palliative care awards and publications from 2014 to 2024. We screened titles and abstracts using NIH iSearch tools for eligibility, yielding 899 awards and 1703 publications, then abstracted and analyzed research type, population, setting, and National Consensus Project for Quality Palliative Care (NCP) domain.

Palliative care research awards nearly doubled from 2014 to 2024 across 17 NIH institutes. Over 40% included clinical trials, and nearly 30% were career development or training awards. Most addressed the NCP domains of Structure and Processes (35.3%) and Physical Symptoms (20.4%). Publication influence was above average, measured by relative citation ratio. Most articles reported on data collection (36.9%) or secondary analysis (37.9%); few reported clinical trials (9.2%). Over 80 articles leveraged NIH-funded infrastructure. Few awards (7.8%) or publications (6.3%) addressed health disparities.

NIH investment in palliative care research increased over the period of interest. Increased support for the breadth of palliative care research beyond end-of-life care, clinical trials and intervention development, studies focused on caregivers and palliative care for persons living with Alzheimer's and related dementias, research and data infrastructure, and inclusion of palliative care-relevant content in large center and network awards are clear successes. While many 2004 NIH research priorities were addressed, gaps remain. Sustained investment with increased coordination could systematically accelerate translation of high-quality palliative care into widespread real-world practice.