policy analysis of cancer palliative care in the eastern mediterranean region: a scoping review

Context: the review of palliative care (pc) policies was introduced as one of the four main components of the who pc strategy. considering that eastern meditranian region countries (emrcs) has made efforts to establish and develop pc in recent years, coordinated data collection provides a clearer picture of needs, challenges, and barriers at the regional level. objective: the aim of this study was to analyze pc policies related to cancer in the emrcs. methods: a scoping review was conducted and reported following the prisma extension guidelines for scoping reviews (prisma-scr). scopus, medline, embase, sciencedirect, pubmed, web of science, google scholar, and proquest were searched to identify relevant articles published in english and no limit time considered pc related policies in emrcs. a walt and gilson model (context, content, process and actors) was used as a framework for analyzing and summarizing findings results: out of the 43 papers included in this study, 38 (88.37%) were journal articles. the studies covered countries such as egypt, jordan, saudi arabia, lebanon, cyprus, oman, united arab emirates, palestine, and iran. the extracted policies were classified into leadership and commitment of policy makers, affordable access (in context), providing integrated patient-family oriented services, improving the quality of care, creating the possibility of information-sharing (in content), focus/invest in specialized training, capacity building in society (in process), and involve all stakeholders (in actors). conclusions: the results of the present study provide a clear picture of how policies are made in the field of pc design and development in emrcs. before establishing such a system, it is essential to consider a wide range of economic, social, cultural, and political factors, mainly included in the four axes of walt and gilson's policy triangle. the results of this research can be used in policy making, design and formulation, as well as in decisions related to pc system programs.