Engagement: An Example to Watch

Engagement has become the new buzz word in health today. But, for us at Edelman, engagement is more than just a new trend. For a number of years, we have made the concept of engagement as a central guiding principle for our work in health communications. In fact, we use it so frequently to talk about what health consumers want, what we do as communicators, and how we define success that we undertook our own ongoing proprietary research on the topic via our Health Engagement Barometer. Still today, as we talk to clients and friends about our vision, we sometimes get puzzled looks and questions about the real meaning of engagement.

Now, a recent development in the growing online community of health consumers and physicians gives us a tangible example of what health engagement may look like in the near future.

In recent months, the online health community has taken a significant step in its evolution with the creation of the Society for Participatory Medicine and its launch of the Journal of Participatory Medicine.

We all know the statistics that show a vast number of individual health consumers and some medical professionals have long been users of online information and have participated in advocacy and education forums to share information and experiences. However, with the launch of the society and the journal, the online health community has matured and is being led forward by a distinct group of key influencers collaborating on a mission: to encourage more participatory medicine and change the norms in the delivery of care. These influencers are making their voice heard and creating a movement for health consumers who seek a more engaged way of working with medical professionals.

Members of the society are both patients who have harnessed the power of information to actively manage their own health and forward-thinking medical professionals supportive of a new collaborative model of health care and shared decision making. (Dr. Danny Sand’s post gives a great perspective on participatory medicine from a physician’s point of view.) That’s a far cry from the pattern of patients trolling Web sites in isolation to bring information to their physicians, who have then worked on their own to either validate or discount patient-provided information.

For communicators, this community will be one to follow to better understand health consumers – especially their preferences for patient-physician collaborations, information sharing and making decisions about managing their health. Also, organizations and professionals who have thoughtful contributions to make to the community’s discussion will likely be rewarded with feedback and relationships that may help shape future decisions about models of care delivery.

The society may be launching with a small group of key influencers, but if the momentum coming out of the recent e-Patient Connections conference held in Philadelphia is any indication, there is a huge appetite among health consumers for such new models of collaboration.

That’s a model to watch in the new world of health engagement.

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