"The fight for patient empowerment" (Tim Greacen)

Join the adventure, click here.

  CI - © Care Insight

The concept of empowerment was first developed in community psychology to help poor people and excluded groups to defend their rights and take control over their lives, or in anthropology, empowering “primitive” tribes in the Amazonian forest to cope with industrial deforestation, around three dimensions :

If you have a health project, you need access not only to knowledge and know-how, but also to a system that provides decent care support in order to succeed. In countries like Australia, children are trained in health at school from a very early age and right through their school years. Health belongs to citizens, not to health professionals.

But in countries with a traditional patriarchal health system like France, empowerment means taking back control over what belongs to you as a citizen.

In France, we do not have a Ministry of Health but a Ministry of Sickness, with a ridiculously small health promotion budget. On the contrary, internationally, a wellness-based approach is being promoted. Wellness is about the quality of life, and about people’s life projects.

People do not want to be taken charge of, they want to learn how to take care of their health, their own health, their children’s health, their local community’s health. Indeed, “We” is a key aspect of empowerment. I will take an example in mental health : the recovery movement in the US in the 1980s-1990s changed their whole way of looking at mental disorders. It is now accepted that you can get better, even if you have a serious illness like a psychosis. Yes, there is a risk of relapse. But you learn something new each time. The situation is very different in France : a wealthy country that keeps people with mental health disorders coddled in golden cages for decades years after they have first seen a doctor.

The question we should ask ourselves is simple : do we want to be ill or not? The system needs to be rebuilt around a wellness-based approach. France is late, but it can catch up and is moving fast in the right direction. An illness-based, bio-medical approach still dominates.

The determinants of health are multiple. Empowerment is about knowing what wellness is, what its determinants are, but also knowing how the system works, a hugely complex issue in wealthy countries like France.

The Scandinavian countries, Australia, New Zealand… but there are many initiatives throughout the world, from basic wellness-based health education through to patient education, carer and peer support or community-based wellness programs.

What is the role of the Internet and the digital revolution in the empowerment of people ?

Internet gives people easy and anonymous access to networks of information and support, including with regard to more delicate personal issues, for example in mental health, addictions, or sexual health.

At some point in the future, we won’t need to go to hospitals or to the doctor’s anymore. We will be speaking with avatars who will give us up-to-date, evidence-based advice based on our complete personal health records.

They have an essential role in voicing the users’ point of view with regard to the health system.

Tim Greacen

Author and publisher of seven books and numerous publications on the rights of users of the health care system and promotion. Tim Greacen speaks sometimes to the scientific community, to the general public or to specific populations (people living with HIV, people with intellectual disabilities, people with psychic disabilities). His research work, as well as his associative activities, focuses on the empowerment of citizens in terms of health and, more specifically, the empowerment of people living with a mental disorder.

cI - © CI Health & Tech for People is an international event which have the purpose of promoting Empowerment patient and the value based care thanks to a mondial benchark. To discover more information about it, click here.