Posted on: 12 March 2026
Sarah Yardley, Associate Professor of Palliative Medicine at University College London has recently had her work published through the Churchill Fellowship. She’s been working hard to make sure that people living with complex mental health conditions receive equitable, relational, and needs‑based palliative care.
Her recent report, Rewilding Healthcare: Reimagining Palliative Care for People Living with Complex Mental Health Conditions, asks the question: “How can we reimagine palliative care so that systems meet the needs of people living with complex mental health conditions who are also diagnosed with advanced, incurable physical illnesses?”
The report highlights a reality many clinicians recognise: people often say they “don’t fit the system” or feel that “not everyone thinks we deserve care.” These experiences show that getting the right care for people with the least access to resources, has the power to improve care for everyone.
Yadley’s concept of “rewilding healthcare” calls for systems that position relationships and relationality at the centre, with structures acting as a supportive scaffold. This enables adaptive, context aware decision-making characteristics such as trust, respect and shared judgement to be at the forefront and expands what the system understands as “good care” by drawing on community knowledge and lived experience.
To inform this work, Yardley visited services in Canada, the United States and Australia, bringing international insights back to the UK to shape more inclusive, relational models of palliative care.