Compassionate communities in palliative care: review of international experiences and description of an initiative in Medellin, Colombia

Abstract

Objective: To describe worldwide experiences of compassionate communities that serveas a complement to palliative care services and show the advances of the proyect “CompassionateMedellin, everybody with you” conducted in Colombia. Methodology: A narrative review of theliterature was conducted through a search in Medline, Ovid, Sciencedirect, Embase, Mediclatina, Healthsource y Google and manual exploration of articles. The keywords “compassionate communities” or“communities” or “support networks” and “palliative care” or “end-of-life care” were used. Results:The idea of the compassionate communities originated from the concept of healthy cities proposedby the WHO. It has since permeated public health and, particularly, palliative care. Compassionatecommunities seek to complement health care services through the empowerment of communitiestowards the care of their members facing advanced illness and the end-of-life and the developmentof caregiving networks. The article describes the development of this movement and a series ofinternational experiences, as well as the initiative conducted in Medellin, Colombia. Conclusions: Themain aim of compassionate communities in the world is to improve the quality of life of people withadvanced illness and facing end-of-life, through the empowerment of their social group in the tasksand needs of care they may have. These communities have emerged throughout the world and achievetheir goals using different strategies. Their efforts might be useful not only to empower communitiesin caregiving actions, but to also successfully complement palliative care assistance, particularly incontexts where these are still under development.