Palliative Care Research Agenda in Thailand

This research address an important gap in Thailand’s palliative care development: while palliative care services have expanded, research remains fragmented and insufficiently aligned with the country’s major system-level challenges. The study therefore seeks not only to review existing knowledge, but also to identify where future research should be directed to strengthen service delivery, governance, financing, workforce development, and information systems. The research used an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design. First, a scoping review and desk review were conducted to examine the current state of Thai palliative care research and related systemic barriers. The study reviewed 493 publications from Thai and international databases published between 2015 and 2024. It also included analysis of collaboration networks among institutions involved in palliative care research. In the second phase, the team synthesized 18 research topics and prioritized them through a modified Delphi process involving 30 experts from health services, policy, government, academia, NGOs, and community-based organizations, followed by a World Café meeting to refine consensus into a strategic research agenda. The findings highlight that Thailand has made progress in financing and workforce training for palliative care, but major systemic gaps remain. These include limited integration across levels of care, weak links between hospital and community services, insufficient public-private knowledge exchange, lack of consistent quality monitoring, workforce coordination challenges, funding limitations for service delivery and opioid access, resource and hospice-care constraints, and underdeveloped health information systems. From the prioritization process, four major future research directions emerged: system governance and service model management, service and workforce needs, innovative financing and reimbursement mechanisms, and integrated health information systems. Together, these findings position the study as a foundation for a national palliative care research strategy in Thailand.