The Meaning, Limitations and Possibilities of Making Palliative Care a Public Health Priority by Declaring it a Human Right

There is a growing movement to increase access to palliative care by declaring it a human right. Calls for such a right-in the form of articles in the healthcare literature and pleas to the United Nations and World Health Organization-rarely define crucial concepts involved in such a declaration, in particular 'palliative care' and 'human right'. This paper explores how such concepts might be more fully developed, the difficulties in using a human rights approach to promote palliative care, and the relevance of such an enterprise to public health ethics.