POLICY AND PRACTICE REVIEWS article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health Policy
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1624446
This article is part of the Research TopicHealth Policy Approaches to Chronic Disease ManagementView all 10 articles
Evolution and Textual Quantitative Analysis of China's Palliative Care Policies: A Three-Dimensional Analytical Framework Approach
Provisionally accepted
- Hebei University of Chinese Medicine, Shijiazhuang, China
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Background:To summarize the evolution trend of China's hospice policy, dissect the possible instrumental problems of the policy, and provide reference for the optimization and improvement of China's hospice policy. Methods:Policy document analysis was used to encode and examine palliative care policy texts. The use of policy tools was assessed across three dimensions: policy types, participating entities, and temporal trends. Results:A total of 36 policy documents were analyzed. In the X dimension, 253 codes were identified, with environmental, supply, and demand policy tools comprising 57.71%, 23.32%, and 18.97%, respectively. In the Y dimension, 423 codes were identified, with government agencies, medical institutions, social organizations, and healthcare professionals comprising 73.05%, 18.44%, 4.96%, and 3.55%, respectively. In the Z dimension, 253 codes were identified, corresponding to three stages: initial exploration (10.67%), in-depth exploration (14.62%), and pilot implementation (74.70%). Conclusion:Palliative care in China is gradually advancing. However, policy tools remain imbalanced, with a strong emphasis on environmental tools over demand-side tools, leading to internal structural inconsistencies. The allocation of policy tools among stakeholders is also uneven, characterized by a single-entity dominance and a government-driven supply model. It is recommended that policies be aligned with their developmental stages, the structure of policy tools be optimized, balanced utilization among stakeholders be ensured, and role differentiation and collaboration enhanced.
Keywords: Palliative Care, policy tools, participants, time series, three-dimensional analysis
Received: 07 May 2025; Accepted: 21 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Zhao, Xing, Zhang, Qu, Ye, Ji and Li. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jianya Ye, Hebei University of Chinese Medicine, Shijiazhuang, China
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