Published on: November 30, 2025

Reflections on Children’s Palliative Care as a Component of Universal Health Coverage.

Each December 12th, we recognize Universal Health Coverage Day. For palliative care providers, it offers an opportunity to reflect on the progress made in reaching new communities through innovation and new partnerships.

At the global level, the World Health Assembly passed a resolution in 2014 calling on all countries to strengthen access to palliative care. In addition, palliative care was recognized as one of the five core pillars of primary health care by the World Health Organization in 2018. Despite this progress, only 14% of people who require palliative care have access to it, and, unfortunately, this includes less than 3% of children.

Globally, efforts to expand access to essential health care for children facing health-related suffering have faced significant challenges. The overarching barrier that prevents children from receiving the health care they need is poverty. Two in five children worldwide live in severe deprivation – 90% of those living in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Poverty reduction efforts have been significantly impacted since the COVID-19 pandemic due to global development aid cuts, emerging conflicts, and new challenges from climate change.

In the face of such challenges, access to palliative care for children is more vital than ever. It not only is effective at reducing health related suffering, but it also has shown to be an effective driver of community-based action through the compassionate communities’ movement.

To combat the challenges facing access to palliative care, there have been many exciting developments over the last year. Groundbreaking research is occurring that partners with children’s palliative care providers and communities to design effective strategies for implementing care. Further, training programs, such as the one with Two Worlds Cancer Collaboration, that not only equip providers to provide palliative care to children, but also to co-create new training programs in their own communities.

There have also been new tools released to promote innovation. One is the Global Treehouse Foundation’s Magnify Tool, which supports children’s palliative care providers to identify new strategies that improve care using their existing service data.

In advocating for children’s palliative care, several workshops and forums have been hosted to bring about new strategies for improving access to palliative care. Global leaders gathered at the Collaborating for Global Impact Workshop, hosted by Global Partners and Care, and the Global Palliative Care Action Forum and regional children’s palliative care leadership workshops, hosted by St. Jude Global. These workshops are bringing representatives together from across the world to develop testable ideas to improve access to palliative care.

These initiatives, along with calls to action put out by the 2025 WISH Report, all have one thing in common – compassionate collaboration.

To ensure we are improving access to children’s palliative care and effectively integrating it into universal health coverage, we must keep compassionate collaboration at the heart of all we do. By bringing together children, families, community, providers, and leaders, we can co-create policies and models of care that keep children at the heart of what we do. Only together can we build the systems of tomorrow that improve access to care for children facing health-related suffering across the globe.

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References:

1. Connor, Stephen. (2020). Global Atlas of Palliative Care 2nd Edition.
2. Harding R, Hammerich A, Peeler A, et al. Palliative Care: How can we respond to 10 years of limited progress. 2024.
3. United Nations Children’s Fund, The State of the World’s Children 2025: Ending child poverty – Our shared imperative, UNICEF, New York, November 2025.
4. Downing, J., Randall, D., Mcnamara-Goodger, K. et al. Children’s palliative care and public health: position statement. BMC Palliat Care 24, 89 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12904-025-01653-1

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