Issues in end of life care: a UK-US comparative perspective (360G-Wellcome-093720_Z_10_Z)

Issues pertaining to end of life care are among the most topical and important in the health policy discourse in the UK and the US, highlighted, for example, by recent controversial recommendations by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence over the provision of high cost cancer interventions, and Sarah Palin's warning against the creation of 'death panels'. The issues can encompass, for instance, ethical (when is it ever right to 'pull the plug'), economic (how much is the end of life 'worth'), and political (is an open, public debate on the end of life even possible?) concerns, all of which are perhaps substantively influenced by the institutional construct of health care systems, which differ none more so than between the UK and the US. The objective of this seminar is to enlighten the 'end of life' debate ongoing in both the UK and the US, and to explore whether the differential understanding across these countries is intractable, or whether there is genuine scope for cross-country learning and understanding. The intention would be to publish the proceedings as a journal special issue.