The end of death in late modernity: An emerging public health challenge

Abstract

Health promotion discourses often assume that death and loss are someone else's business—usually palliative care or bereavement care. Palliative care and bereavement care, in their turn, provide direct service, acute care approaches to death and loss. Between these two approaches, little health promotion is evidenced. This paper critiques the assumptions both make about death in late modernity arguing that death and loss are increasingly social experiences for people that require active support and community development from the ‘new’ public health. The past therapeutic emphasis and the secularized view of death are receding. A new approach to death and loss is needed and the new public health may have an important major role to play in addressing these changes.