Compassionate Cities - Public Health and End-of-Life Care (Hardcover)

Imagine if whole communities - not simply a community's direct health services - really cared about its member's health and social well-being. Imagine if that care extended to the dying, death and losses experienced by everyone in that community. Imagine if "death" was an idea that went beyond the "death of the body" and came to include the deaths of identity and belonging as these endings apply to people living with dementia or the aftermath of sexual abuse, dispossession of indigenous or refugee peoples. Such community and policy frameworks partly do exist in the World Health Organization's "Healthy Cities" international programs, but they often do not include end-of-life care issues such as death, dying and loss. This book takes the idea of the Healthy City and extends these policy and practice ideas to include frequently overlooked end-of-life care experiences and concerns. Compassion is an idea that goes beyond "health" and "welfare" and embraces and promotes empathy and support as new forms of "health promotion."
Beginning with an examination of the parallel histories of public health and end-of-life care the book moves to a critique of the current limits of both for human experiences of death, dying and loss. The theory and policy ideas of Healthy Cities are introduced and a comparison with Compassionate Cities policies made. Policies of Compassionate Cities are discussed alongside their sociological basis. The strengths and weaknesses of such large-scale programs are examined. The final sections of the book outline and summarize basic models of community development and action strategies for implementing a "Compassionate Cities" program.
This is a book for practitionerswho want to include end-of-life care issues into their health promotion and community development practices. It is also a book for end-of-life care practitioners who want to include community development and health promotion ideas into their practice. For social sciences, public health and end-of-life care academics this book argues that the integration of death, loss and compassion into contemporary public health ideas may address important long-standing limits and criticism of public health. "Compassion" may go beyond "infection control" and "health promotion" and invite us to think of a "third wave" movement of public health that joins empathy, equality and action together as practical policies for future domestic and international well-being.