Background and Workshop Aim: Robert Kastenbaum, a U.S-based psychologist, elucidated the concept of ‘death systems’ in 1977, but it has rarely been utilized in research and practice conducted at the intercept of public health and palliative care (PHPC). In this workshop, we aim to present an overview of the death system concept, and with participants, critically examine its potential utility for researchers and practitioners working in this field. We particularly focus on the death system concept’s potential and limitations in contributing to understanding and evaluating “compassionate communities”.

The Death System Concept: Kastenbaum focused on how our encounters with death are systematically related to the societies in which they occur and thus to basic ways of life. He argued that consideration of death systems allows us to be attentive to interconnections and relationships, with respect given to how cultural and societal norms, expectations, traditions, and symbols affect even individual experiences. Kastenbaum’s death system is composed of functions, ordered along a time trajectory from warnings and prediction through social consolidation after death, and each function consists of components of importance, i.e. people, place, time, symbols and objects.

Workshop Approach: In this workshop, we provide a short overview of the death system concept as described by Kastenbaum, before briefly exemplifying its’ relationship to empirical work in Australia and in the Swedish DöBra research program. This introduction is intended to stimulate critical exploration with workshop participants about transferability, relevance, and limitations of the death system concept in PHPC initiatives in different settings using varying approaches. Learning objectives of this knowledge exchange include participants’ consideration of the death system concept’s benefits and limitations in: exploring impact of different PHPC initiatives, supporting EoL-related2 cross-cultural understandings, and helping address levers for cultural and social change.