News Briefs – JANUARY 2026
by INELDA
WHO Commits to Traditional Medicine
Delegates from more than 100 countries gathered in Delhi in December 2025 to signal a commitment to traditional medicine. This second World Health Organization Global Summit on Traditional Medicine saw leaders advancing the WHO Global Traditional Medicine Strategy 2025-2034, which lays out “a vision for universal access to safe, effective and people-centred traditional, complementary and integrative medicine.”
At the summit, the organization unveiled the WHO Traditional Medicine Global Library. Consolidating more than 1.6 million digital resources on traditional and complementary medicine (TCIM), the platform features databases, evidence maps, and scientific journals on TCIM. The library includes nearly 10,000 resources mentioning palliative care, along with thousands more on end of life and hospice.
The declaration includes direction regarding TCIM across the care continuum, including palliative care. The summit comes at a time when patients at end of life are seeking complementary medicine, as indicated in recent research out of Singapore showing that at least half of cancer patients in the study sample used complementary and alternative medicine in the last year of life. Twenty-six of the member states represented at the conference also signed the Delhi Declaration, in which members pledge to integrate traditional medicine into primary health care systems.
Rural Health Gets Federal Boost
With rural populations facing barriers to the full suite of end-of-life care, news out of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) strikes a hopeful note: All 50 states will benefit from a $50 billion program aimed at supporting rural health care.
The Rural Health Transformation Program will distribute $50 billion over five years, with half of the funding being distributed equally among all approved states and half being allocated via metrics such as rurality, existing rural health systems, and current and proposed state policies affecting quality of rural health care. Abstracts for all 50 states are available for public viewing.
“More than 60 million Americans living in rural areas have the right to equal access to quality care,” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., said in a CMS press release. The funds will bolster rural health workforce numbers, update facilities, and support innovation that can increase access to care.
Making Friends With Death
A recent study of nearly 100 people ages 65 and older found that 70% of participants have a “friendly relationship to death,” the term the researchers use to describe an “affective warmth toward death itself, as a familiar and nonthreatening presence rather than an abstract inevitability.”
The research, published in BMC Geriatrics, indicates that a friendly relationship with death is associated with more acceptance of one’s own death, lower fear of death, heightened spirituality, and a “satisfied hunger for life.” Notably, it was not correlated with suicidality, depression, or disease burden.
“Given evidence linking lower death anxiety to both successful aging and greater readiness for death, a [friendly relationship to death] could represent a positive dimension of resilience that supports well-being in later life,” the researchers write, concluding with the sentiment that a passive welcoming of death could be viewed as successful aging, not a cause for psychiatric intervention.
Posted 1/14/2026