The need to ‘cling together’

May 1 2018

Tess wrote this beautiful whakatauki (proverb) with the support of one of our senior kaumatua, Whaea Whio Hansen. It speaks to the findings of our recent paper in Palliative Medicine exploring the role of community for people who die in advanced age and their family and whānau carers. It also speaks to many other aspects of our work as well.

A new podcast where I discuss the paper is now available on the Palliative Medicine website. In a nutshell, we found that many people who die in their 80s and 90s are isolated from their wider communities at the time of death. We argue that public health approaches to building compassionate communities must recognise that access to social capital is not equally distributed. In particular, and as I have argued previously, we believe there is an urgent need to engage with gerontology research, practice and policy.

For any more information please email me: m.gott@auckland.ac.nz