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Palliative Care

A section of Healthcare (ISSN 2227-9032).

Section Information

The Palliative Care Section welcomes high-quality manuscripts that advance knowledge, clinical practice, healthcare delivery, education, and policy with regard to the care of people living with serious, chronic, progressive, or life-limiting illnesses, together with their families and caregivers. Palliative care is not limited to the final days of a patient’s life; it is a person-centered approach that should be integrated early and appropriately throughout the disease trajectory, alongside disease-modifying treatments when indicated. Its goals are to improve quality of life, relieve physical, psychological, social, and spiritual suffering, support decision-making, and preserve dignity.

Families and caregivers are essential partners in palliative care, contributing to communication, care planning, symptom management, and continuity across care settings. However, caregiving may also result in substantial emotional, physical, social, and financial burdens. Therefore, this Section also welcomes submissions that address caregiver involvement, education, support, health, and bereavement needs.

The global need for palliative care is increasing due to factors such as population aging, multimorbidity, cancer, organ failure, neurodegenerative diseases, frailty, and serious health-related suffering. Nevertheless, access remains uneven across countries, healthcare systems, clinical settings, and population groups. Particular emphasis is placed on health equity and on reducing the disparities affecting underserved populations, including people living in rural or resource-limited areas, socioeconomically disadvantaged communities, migrants, minority cultural or linguistic groups, and people with disabilities.

We are seeking submissions on early integration of palliative care in oncological and non-oncological diseases; advance care planning; serious illness communication; shared decision-making; pain and symptom management; psychosocial, spiritual, ethical, and cultural aspects of care; caregiver support; bereavement; and palliative care in hospitals, hospices, nursing homes, community services, home care, emergency departments, and intensive care units. Pediatric, geriatric, and dementia palliative care are also within the Section’s scope.

Emerging areas of interest include telepalliative care, digital health, artificial intelligence, real-world data, integrated care pathways, scalable models of care, quality indicators, and patient- and caregiver-reported outcomes. Implementation science, dissemination research, and knowledge translation are key priorities, particularly when they examine how evidence-based interventions can be adapted, adopted, sustained, and incorporated into routine practice.

The Section welcomes original research, including clinical and translational research, reviews, educational and clinical practice-oriented papers, multicenter studies, methodological papers, implementation and quality-improvement studies, brief reports, consensus documents, and well-designed surveys. Manuscripts addressing policy, financing, workforce development, professional education, and healthcare system redesign are also encouraged.

The Section aims to serve as an international forum for clinicians, researchers, educators, policymakers, patients, caregivers, and healthcare professionals committed to strengthening palliative care as an essential component of equitable, evidence-based, and sustainable healthcare.