When one thinks about palliative care, it’s often within the context of “at the end-of-life”, but Dr. Steve Pantilat, director of the Palliative Care Program at the University of California, San Francisco, says it should also be viewed as through the end of life.

"So, before and during and then with the family after. Our focus is how can you live well with serious illness? It is also about dying, but if all we think about is changing dying and how people die, it’s a little bit like saying, “we have to increase high school graduation rates and so we’re going to focus on 12th grade. You’ve got to go to preschool to really have an impact over time. And the same thing is true if we want the end of life to look better, We have to start way back, even before people get sick and begin to have these conversations about what’s important. So, what I see in the future is that this is just a normal part of our conversation."