Who Gets to Die with Dignity? Rethinking Palliative Care

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In this episode of Comforting Closure - Conversations with a Death Doula, host Traci Arieli is joined by Ashley Mollison from the Palliative Approaches to Care in Aging and Community Health Research Program at the Institute on Aging & Lifelong Health at the University of Victoria. Ashley is also a PhD candidate in the Social Dimensions of Health program at the University of Victoria, and her work centers on equity, exclusion, and structural vulnerability at the end of life. 

Ashley has spent years walking alongside people who are dying without housing, without family, and often without a place to go. Together, Traci and Ashley discuss what it really means to die with dignity in systems that weren’t built to serve everyone. 

Key takeaways include: 

• Why “You can’t die here” is more than a logistical problem 
• What happens when palliative care ignores people pushed to the margins 
• How harm reduction and outreach workers become informal end-of-life caregivers 
• The emotional toll and grief carried by peer support workers 
• Why equitable care requires rethinking who caregiving is for and who provides it 

This episode invites you to examine the hidden assumptions built into palliative care and offers a powerful reminder: dignity at the end of life is a reflection of how we show up for each other long before that moment comes. 

Links/Resources 

• Palliative Approaches: https://palliativeapproaches.uvic.ca 
• Ashley Mollison’s Profile: https://www.uvic.ca/research/groups/palliative/our-team/uvic-team/profiles/mollison-ashley.php 
• Institute on Aging & Lifelong Health: https://www.facebook.com/uvic.institute.on.aging
• Host Traci Arieli’s Website: https://www.comfortingclosure.com 

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