Health Advocacy

Health Advocacy and Health Communication for Elderly Health Care Consumers: Rationale, Demand, and Policy Implications

“…Individual level health advocacy, delivered both informally and formally, can provide valuable support for elderly health care consumers to help these consumers receive relevant health information, advice, and the best care to promote their health and well‐being. PHAs depend on their strategic communication skills to gather relevant information concerning elderly consumer's health concerns, interpret health care recommendations and advice, share this information clearly and compellingly with consumers, and to serve as a liaison between consumers, health care providers, family members, and health care system administrators (Kreps, 2013; Mattson, & Lam, 2015). PHAs often serve a multitude of specific functions for elderly patients, including making an array of arrangements for patients within health care delivery systems, helping to schedule patient health care services and appointments, coordinating care from different specialists (such as, therapists, surgeons, nutritionists, pharmacists, and many others), accompanying patients to appointments, arranging patient transportation to health care settings, negotiating health care billing issues, picking up and delivering medications and health care supplies for patients, providing patients with relevant health information in ways patients can understand to help patients make informed health decisions, filling out needed forms, explaining patients' perspectives to health care providers and administrators, answering patients' questions about health advice provided to them by health care providers, and searching for relevant health information for patients (Kreps, 2013; Mattson & Lam, 2015).…”

“…There are also narrowly focused HAGOs that support the needs of patients and families confronting specific health care concerns, such as the Alzheimer's Association, the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, and the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. Both the broader and more narrowly focused HAGOs are complex organizational enterprises that depend on strategic communication activities to support health care consumer needs, such as working cooperatively with media representatives to raise awareness about key health issues of importance to their members, advancing the growth of health care knowledge and disseminating new information about the diseases they represent to key audiences, engaging in the design and implementation of complex fundraising and health promotion campaigns, and working collaboratively with key representatives of health care delivery systems and health research organizations (Kreps, 2013; Mattson & Lam, 2015; Wallack et al, 1999).…”

“…On the organizational level, advocacy groups and organizations engage in directed communication activities to represent the health needs of consumers who confront similar health challenges. Both the individual and organizational levels of advocacy depend on effective and strategic health communication to help promote the best health outcomes for elderly patients (Kreps, 2013; Mattson, & Lam, 2015).…”

“…In these challenging circumstances, health advocates can provide tremendous support for elderly patients by standing up for and representing patents, who are often incapacitated by their health conditions, to help them accomplish their health care needs and wishes. A growing body of compelling empirical evidence illustrates that effective health advocacy services significantly enhance health outcomes for vulnerable patients (Dillardet al, 2018; Dohan & Shrag, 2005; Greenfield, Kaplan, & Ware, 1985; Kahanaet al, 2010; Kreps, 2003; Kreps & Chapelsky Massimilla, 2002; Kreps & O'Hair, 1995; Kreps & Sivaram, 2010; Mattson & Lam, 2015; Natale‐Pereira et al 2011; Sklar, 2016; Thomas, 2019). Yet there still are limited health advocacy resources for many elderly patients, as well as insufficient relevant and effective policies and programs to promote, support, and sustain health advocacy services for consumers within the modern health care system (Conrad et al, 2019; Godinho, Murthy, & Ciraj, 2017; Sklar, 2016).…”