ABSTRACT
Palliative and end-of-life care affect everyone. Population-based needs assessment helps services, policy makers, and others plan what services are needed for communities. Approaches have been developed to include estimates of need based on the numbers of people approaching the end of life and with advanced illness, symptoms, other problems and suffering, and combinations of these. Needs can be interpreted in different ways, such as felt, expressed, normative, or comparative needs—or a combination of these. Recent approaches to needs assessment have begun to examine future projected needs, And important consideration is the extent that the need is met, which can be powerful when persuading governments and policy makers. Population-based needs assessment is underpinning the evidence and recommendations for universal coverage for palliative and end-of-life care.
