Community engagement strategies: in the too-hard basket?

Community engagement is a key strategy for health promotion, which is identified in the Australian Government’s National Palliative Care Plan and in Palliative Care Australia’s National Standards as an essential component of the provision of palliative care. This presentation reports the findings of the Determining palliative care service capacity for community engagement project. Using a modified form of the community engagement ladder, this study explored the degree to which Australian palliative care services understand community engagement, and the wide-ranging strategies they implement. While moderate levels of understanding were evident, and innovative approaches are made, many elements of community engagement remain unfamiliar to many services. Where understanding is good, limited capacity to implement these elements persists. In light of these constraints, what is the future of community engagement in the Australian palliative care sector?