Death literacy
Death literacy involves the practical knowledge and skills that individuals and communities need to understand, make informed choices about, and manage end-of-life issues, including death, dying, caregiving, and bereavement.
Our new death literacy research theme is led by Research Fellow, Dr Michelle Edwards. Dr Edwards has expertise in healthcare communication, including shared decision-making and health literacy in primary care, cancer care and palliative care.
Our research priorities are to:
- explore the conceptualisation and meaning of death literacy
- explore and develop policy frameworks to promote death literacy in the UK
- understand how death literacy is practised in the UK population
- understand and address the key determinants of death literacy
- adapt and develop appropriate measures of death literacy
- develop and evaluate public health interventions to improve death literacy
We are completing a series of literature and policy reviews to explain the meaning and relevance of death literacy in the UK. The next step is to carry out community focused research to understand death literacy in communities and explore organisations and groups which support death literacy.
Death Literacy Research Network (DELIA)
We launched a Death Literacy Research Network in July 2024 to bring together researchers and stakeholders to discuss death literacy in Wales.
In May 2025, we hosted a webinar entitled 'Understanding Death Literacy in our Welsh Context: Death Literacy measurement in the UK and Ireland and future research to understand death literacy in Wales'.
The focus of the webinar was to reflect on the importance of death literacy in Wales and to measure death literacy in our Welsh culture and language context. We had presentations from Dr Lisa Graham-Wisener and Ms Stephanie Crawford from Queens’ University Belfast, who talked about measuring death literacy in the UK using the Death Literacy Index (DLI) and assessing the appropriateness of the DLI for Ireland.
If you’d like to join the Death Literacy Research Network and be updated on future webinars and events, please email Dr Michelle Edwards.
