Davies, J. M., Chua, K. C., Maddocks, M., Murtagh, F. E. M. & Sleeman, K. E. (2025) Palliative Medicine, 40,(2, ), 273-277 [ONS LS]

Other information:
Background:

In high-income countries, people from ethnic minority backgrounds are less likely to access specialist palliative care1 and appropriate pain relief medication,2 and use unplanned hospital care more in the last months of life.3 Where people die depends on many social and clinical factors.4 Most people prefer to avoid dying in hospital if possible, and yet hospital remains the most common place of death.4 Historically, it has been challenging to explore ethnic inequality in place of death because ethnicity is not recorded on death certificates in most countries.5 Census data contains self-reported ethnicity data considered the ‘gold-standard’ compared to the assigned ethnicity information common in clinical records. When linked to mortality records, Census data provides a valuable but underused resource for understanding ethnic inequalities in place of death.
We investigated the association between ethnicity and death in hospital (compared to all other locations) and examined how far this association is explained by geography, socioeconomic factors, and cause of death.

Available online: Palliative Medicine,