Building Integrated Palliative Care Programs and Services

An ad hoc technical advisory group (TAG) for palliative care was formed and is working with the WHO staff on plans for implementation with the mission to provide advice to WHO Secretariat for the implementation of the resolution on Strengthening of palliative care as a component of comprehensive care throughout the life course, adopted by the World Health Assembly, in May 2014 (WHA 67 .19), the functions of identification of priority issues to be addressed for the implementation of the WHA Resolution, the definition of strategic directions and work plan including activities to be implemented in the main areas defined by the WHA Resolution, such as technical guidelines, monitoring and evaluation, capacity strengthening, global partnerships, the tool development including indicators for the monitoring and evaluation of quality palliative care programs and training tools and to knowledge sharing and analysis of palliative care models . The expected outputs include policy brief on strengthening of health palliative care services, throughout the life course and across disease groups, technical guidelines and monitoring tools for the strengthening and evaluation of palliative care programs, online training tools and educational programs for health care providers, including home care providers, dissemination of updated information on models of palliative care and identification of research priority issues . The TAG met in Barcelona in December 2015 to debate and define the conceptual framework and to elaborate the proposals.