Marketing and Messaging Palliative Care
Due to low public awareness and consistent misconceptions, how you frame palliative care and its benefits is vitally important. Marketing, supported by sound messaging, helps patients, families, referral sources, and service partners understand the work that you do. Palliative care is about quality of life. When done well, proper messaging and marketing can clarify this and motivate patients, families, and clinicians to take advantage of it.
Use this toolkit to refine your program’s marketing strategy, and your messaging.
What’s in the Toolkit
Messaging Palliative Care
Defining and discussing palliative care correctly is the key to clarifying its benefits for both public and provider audiences.
Definition of palliative care and how it improves quality of life for patients living with a serious illness, and their families.
User-tested language on how to talk about what palliative care is and why it's needed.
A quick and easy reference for what to say - and what not to say - when communicating about palliative care.
A new analysis shows we’re still mixing messages for palliative care.
Presentation on key messaging considerations for palliative care professionals and advocates.
Messaging is critical to the field of Palliative Care. Clarity and consistency are key. Watch this webinar recording for a deep dive into the most frequently asked questions about how to use palliative care messaging.
Videos from CAPC's YouTube channel about messaging palliative care.
Use this document as a guide for choosing appropriate photos when communicating about palliative care.
Online toolkit for evidence-based messaging around caring for people living with serious illness. This toolkit was created to help clinicians and organizations improve their messaging to the public so that more people can benefit from services like palliative care.
View the stories of people living with a serious illness and benefiting from palliative care.
Making the Case for Palliative Care
CAPC helps you make the case for the value of palliative care with organization leaders, colleagues, and community partners.
This graphic illustrates that palliative care is appropriate at any point in a serious illness and is based on need, not prognosis. The goal is to improve quality of life.
Tools to make the case for palliative care resources and financial partnerships, including the palliative care evidence base and downloadable tools for presenting the case.
This publication includes key messages for health system leaders about the value of hospital palliative care, applicable across settings.
The majority of people with serious illness are neither dying nor hospitalized. So, palliative care needs to be available in all settings outside hospitals—in medical offices and clinics, in post-acute and long-term care facilities, and in patient homes. This publication includes key data on the value of community palliative care, program profiles, and a case example to use with leadership.
Audience Research
Learn from CAPC's extensive national public opinion research on palliative care.
Insights from qualitative and quantitative research that tracked public and physician awareness, perceptions, attitudes, and interest in palliative care and how they have shifted over time. Watch the recording and download the slides.
Slides from August 8, 2019 briefing on insights from qualitative and quantitative research that tracked public and physician awareness, perceptions, attitudes, and interest in palliative care and how they have shifted over time.
In 2011, CAPC engaged the polling firm Public Opinion Strategies (POS), to conduct extensive national audience research on palliative care among U.S. adults. This national survey resulted in the only evidence-based definition of palliative care.
Designing Your Marketing Strategy
Strategically marketing the palliative care program to various audiences is critical to success.
Guidance on increasing palliative care referrals through internal marketing.
These eight questions will help palliative care teams across settings get the information they need to form the basis of the marketing plan, including strong communications with their target audience.
Best practices for developing an effective and impactful social media strategy.
Marketing to Increase Referrals
Learn to effectively convey the value of palliative care to both the public and referral sources.
An effective progress note based on the core domains of palliative care is one of your best marketing tools. There's no better way to effectively show referral sources what palliative care can do. Sample document shared by Carle Foundation Hospital, 2017.
Media Relations
Knowing how to talk to the press is critical to your image and reputation.
A primer for palliative care professionals, this guide includes tips and suggestions for working with the media, to ensure proper messaging.
Palliative care is an often-misunderstood term. It is, therefore, critical that everyone talking about palliative care to the media is fully aware of how to define it and how to discuss it correctly. In this video, clinicians role play interviews with a reporter and demonstrate how to use pivots and bridges to redirect a conversation when necessary. While this video focuses on being interviewed by the press, the lessons should be equally applied to any conversation about palliative care that veers off track.
For Patients and Families
Access clear, simple patient and family information and materials on palliative care.
Information for patients and families about palliative care.
Available on GetPalliativeCare.org, this handout contains patient and family-focused frequently asked questions about palliative care.
Spanish version of CAPC's handout containing patient and family-focused frequently asked questions about palliative care. Available on GetPalliativeCare.org. (Informacion sobre cuidados paliativos con preguntas y respuestas para pacientes y sus familias. Disponible en GetPalliativeCare.org.)
This handout contains patient and family-focused frequently asked questions about palliative care. You can customize this version of the handout to include contact information for your palliative care program and your organization's logo. In this zip file you will find an InDesign version for programs with access to a graphic designer, and a Microsoft Word version for those who don't.
Videos about what palliative care is and how it can benefit people living with a serious illness, and their families.
Customize this template to create a program brochure that describes your services to patients and families.
