Deathcare
Deathcare (also death care, death-care or after-deathcare) is the planning, provision, and improvement of post-death services, products, policy, and governance. Here, deathcare functions to describe the industry of deathcare workers, the policy and politics surrounding deathcare provision, and as an interdisciplinary field of academic study. Deathcare, from the point of clinical death, has a diverse timeline. The first point of care often involves immediate healthcare professionals and responders closest to the person who has past away, including doctors, nurses, palliative and end-of-life care workers. From here, the care of deceased individuals has a culturally , religious, and personal course. This can involve a range of people from religious figures, morticians, to grave keepers - all of these roles formulating to what can be known as deathcare workers. Etymology. The word "deathcare" is a compound term from the words death and care. It can also take the form of death care, however this is mostly used in the United States and Canada in the Anglosphere, where deathcare is a preferred variation elsewhere in the English speaking world reflecting on the preferred version of "healthcare" in places like the UK, Australia, India, etc. History. The provision of deathcare  has historically and often continues to be a highly decentralized and diverse practice combining multiple actors and stages. 20th century. Recently, particularly with social phenomenon like the growth of the welfare state and urbanisation of population centres, central government involvement with the deathcare process has risen as socital challenges present themselves to deathcare. 21st century. Examples of government policy involvement including the impact of new burial methods like human composting to pressures like COVID-19 placing on those involved with deathcare as well as their families. Delivery. Government. National and regional governments are often responsible for providing the legal framework for  deathcare to operate within, including laws and guidance on what deathcare techniques, practices, and what individuals/ organisations are involved. However, this has a varying level of non-government organisations, third-sector, religious, and private organisations (such as funeral homes) take part in both providing and shaping deathcare policy and practice. However, most research on state interactions within deathcare is limited to the US, with further research needed elsewhere. Governments can also become a major focal point for deathcare services in specific situations, such as with deaths in the military, prisons, or in extraordinary events. COVID-19 is an example of global  governmental intervention to provide mass fatality management to cope with high human fatality around the world. This also brought up issues of inequality and inequity within deathcare as some deaths throughout the pandemic were treated as "more tragic" compared to others, highlighted as a public values failure as economic productivity and social worth overruled public health and humanity. Industry. There is a global marketplace for deathcare in the produces, services, and insurance that surrounds someone's death. Deathcare Industrial Complex (DIC) has been outlined as a concept, mirroring the military-industrial complex concept, in at least the US and potentially  Western countries as an industry: "profit-driven, medicalised, de-ritualized and patriarchal [in] form, modern death care fundamentally distorts humans’ relationship to mortality, and through it, nature". Localized efforts to reform and offer innovative deathcare practices can be seen in the natural deathcare movements such as human composting to natural buriels.