ArticlePalliative care and social practice2026
Death literacy as relational capability: Pathways from social capital to emotional support.
Article in Palliative care and social practice, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Public Health Palliative Care: A commitment to dying, death, and grief in Canada.Canadian journal of public health = Revue canadienne de sante publique · 2026Article
- Changing contexts of death and dying: Influence of the COVID-19 pandemic and voluntary assisted dying legislation on death literacy in Australia.Palliative care and social practice · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Death literacy not only refers to the knowledge and skills of individuals; there is emerging evidence that death literacy is relational and is deepened via social networks and within communities. Exploring these relationships can improve our understanding of pathways that influence death literacy and public health palliative care initiatives. Objectives: To examine how community-level resources (social capital) influence perceived emotional support, and to test theoretically motivated mediators-including community openness to conversations about death, participation in end-of-life activities, and death literacy (as measured by the DLI-R). Methods: Cross-sectional survey (N = 831) of adults aged 18+ in the Australian community. A mixed-link generalised structural equation model estimates pathways from social capital to perceived emotional support, via community openness (talking), participation as mediators of death literacy (measured by the DLI-R). Indirect effects and proportions mediated were obtained via BCa bootstrap (5,000 replications). Robustness checks compared alternative orderings. Results: The total association of social capital with support was β≈0.305. About 35.1% (95% CI 24.6-45.6%) was mediated; 64.9% (54.4-75.4%) was direct. Structural pathways indicated that higher social capital was associated with increased conversation climate (β=0.255***), which in turn was associated with increased participation in end-of-life activities (logit β=0.794***; OR≈2.21) and higher death literacy (β=0.524***). Death literacy was also associated with higher perceived emotional support (β=0.140***). Conclusions: Feeling supported at the end of life (EoL) is influenced not only by how socially connected communities are, but by what people are able to understand, talk about, and act on death and dying. Open, everyday conversations about death matter and contribute to this, because they provide an opportunity to build understanding and because they signal willingness to support. This highlights two practical ways to grow compassionate communities, strengthen death literacy and socialising conversations about end of life alongside social connectedness.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.