HEALTHCARE ADVOCACY AND ITS IMPACT ON HEALTHCARE

INTRODUCTION

Health advocacy aims to bridge the gaps within our healthcare systems to ensure that people can access affordable, effective, and high-quality healthcare. These gaps are measured by differences in prevalence, mortality, and other adverse health conditions among specific groups, based on factors like gender, socioeconomic status, or race. Healthcare advocacy can be undertaken as a full-time career or as one element of a traditional healthcare career.

“When we talk about health advocacy, we’re talking about social justice and about working diligently to address critical shortfalls,” says Lysbeth Noyes, adjunct professor at Northeastern University’s Bouvé College of Health Sciences. “It’s about inclusion in health services, which should be available to all people.”

Professionals in this field use legal action, lobbying, demonstrations, writing and enacting policy, and publicity campaigns to move policy forward and bring about change on behalf of community health. Partnerships—especially with members of the community in which one is trying to create change—are particularly important.

Issues Healthcare Advocacy Can Address

Managing health care can be challenging at the best of times. For older adults with cognitive impairment or for people battling symptoms of exhaustion, navigating one’s own health care can be daunting. The result? Patients put off getting the care they need or do not seek care at all.

Patients and their caregivers may spend a lot of time poring over insurance forms or other documents written in jargon they find difficult to follow. They can easily misunderstand diagnoses and treatment options. Such misunderstandings can result in the less effective use of medical services. For example, patients may undergo duplicate diagnostic tests, miss appointments, or take the wrong medication dosage.

Hard-to-interpret health insurance coverage sometimes results in patients not taking full advantage of what is available to them. Other times, patients mistakenly pay inaccurate medical bills containing errors or charges that were actually covered by their health insurance plans. While the national conversation on health care has focused on ways to address these problems, many patients need individual guidance. Healthcare advocates can help.

CONCLUSION

Health advocacy is an essential part of our healthcare system and has become even more important given the complexities of today’s health care systems.Advocacy projects to improve any aspect of health can have the added benefit of building the capacity of communities to move their own agendas. These projects can include low-cost housing, more and better jobs, a cleaner environment, or safer streets—all of which can contribute to improving community health. Decision makers for health care institutions can be held accountable if they are not providing or improving health care consistent with their goal and mission.