Barry Ashpole is an educator and communications consultant living in Ontario, Canada. He has been involved in hospice and palliative care since 1985 and is perhaps best known for Media Watch (2008-2022), his weekly annotated list of current articles and reports on end-of-life care culled from news media and specialist publications in the fields of health care, social services, and related fields. 

Mr. Ashpole developed and taught in-class and online courses for frontline care providers on aspects of end-of-life care at Niagara College of Applied Arts & Technology (2004-2010), Humber College Institute of Technology & Advanced Learning (2005-2008), and Mohawk College of Applied Arts & Technology (2012-2016). Course subjects included: communication, consent and informed decision-making; ethical and legal aspects of end-of-life care; psychosocial aspects of end-of-life care; and death, grief, and bereavement. He has also facilitated workshops, primarily for frontline care providers, on care planning, the family caregiver, and advocacy. He lectured in Singapore on end-of-life care at the Centre for Biomedical Ethics (within the National University of Singapore) and the Lien Centre for Palliative Care.

As a communications consultant, he has undertaken a broad range of initiatives, one of which resulted in the Canadian government's Compassionate Care Benefit for family caregivers. In 2005, he completed two environmental scans—on advance care planning and information needs of family caregivers—for the then Health Canada’s Secretariat for Palliative Care. In 2015, he contributed to a needs assessment of bereaved children living in one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse regions of Canada.

Mr. Ashpole was editor of the Pain Management Newsletter (1988-2002), a single-sponsored publication focused primarily on clinical issues in pain and symptom management of the terminally ill. He has edited or produced educational publications for health care professionals and the lay public, such as, The Palliative Patient: Principles of Treatment (2000) and Journeys: A Series of Booklets on Dying at Home (2001). He has also served on key committees as an active member of the then Ontario Palliative Care Association (1996-2007). 

He is an IAHPC lifetime member, and served on the Board in 2023.