Practices to optimize palliative care delivery and new opportunities in which to integrate palliative care vary across populations and care settings. Systematic reviews are an efficient and methodologically rigorous approach to summarize existing research to identify both evidence-based best practices and new areas for future research and clinical practice. This is the introduction to a special series of articles in which members of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine Research Committee report the results of circumscribed systematic reviews, which in a specific population or care setting seek to 1) summarize existing evidence for optimal palliative care practices or 2) identify opportunities where better palliative care delivery could improve patient and/or family outcomes.