Talking about death and dying A new online course breathes life into a taboo topic. Credit: iStock To encourage open conversation about the inevitable end of life, palliative care experts across Australia devised an online course to teach people more positive ways to talk about it, publishing their evaluation in the journal According to Lauren Miller-Lewis, a lecturer in positive psychology at Flinders University, and colleagues, this is increasingly important as the population ages. “Thus, planning for how we live and provide care at the end-of-life is becoming a major public health issue,” they write. “Understanding contemporary community attitudes and feelings towards death is valuable because it may inform the development of future health services, improve patient and family care at the end-of-life, and it may also inform policy on ways to encourage conversations leading to greater death preparedness and planning.”