Bulletin

Issue: August 2005

Books

Death and loss

Leading Australian sociologist and La Trobe University Professor of Palliative Care, Allan Kellehear, has produced another book to improve our understanding of death and loss, two issues of major significance to public health. Titled Compassionate Cities: Public Health and End-of-Life Care, it is published by Routledge in Great Britain.

The book is a critique of current public health understanding of health and lifestyle and offers an alternative model of practice. It links palliative, bereavement and aged care with issues such as religious tolerance, refugee and indigenous dispossession, and third-world politics to sketch a new way of viewing end-of-life care as a public health issue for the 21st century.

Death and loss continue to be misunderstood despite being the most universal and routine human experiences, says Professor Kellehear. 'For too long we have viewed death as the enemy of health when in fact it was illness and disease that properly occupied that place.

'We often identify death as a threat to, or a failure of, public health policies and initiatives. But this too is untrue. The aim of all health care has always been to prevent premature death and unnecessary harm and to promote feelings of well being.

'End-of-life care, in all its endlessly diverse expressions in daily life, should be the serious subject of public health investigation, policy and practice,' he says.