Health Advocacy and Activism

Health advocacy is an activity that promotes direct health care service to individuals, families, communities and the public in general. Health activists work so that patient's rights are upheld in the health care area. For instance, a few years ago South African AIDS activists requested pharmaceutical company Pfizer to lower the price of its Fluconazole drug to render it accessible to the thousands of AIDS victims in that country. Pfizer is known for creating Viagra, but they also develop many other medications. Health advocates include patient representatives; ombudsmen; educators; care managers; patient navigators and health advisers, working in hospitals; community health centers; long term care facilities or patient services programs of non-profit organizations.

The health advocacy movement started in the 70's, spearheaded by the NWRO, or National Welfare Rights Organization. The NWRO's list of patients rights gained momentum when it was reprinted and distributed by the authors of Our Bodies, Ourselves, a book and non-profit organization that works to educate on the subjects of women's health and sexuality, menopause, birth control, childbirth, sexual health, sexual orientation, gender identity, mental health and general well-being. Back in those days medical technology wasn't as advanced as it is now, therefore hospital stays were long and taxing on the patients, creating a need to oversee the proper treatment of these patients.

Over the years, health advocacy went from being mostly voluntary work to become a full fledged profession, with dozens of organizations and universities offer coursework specific to health advocacy. However, there isn't yet a local or international standard to narrow down this field of work, thus advocates are not certified as health or patient advocates per se. A reflection of this is the proliferation of health advocacy associations without an encompassing entity to supervise them, such as National Association of Healthcare Advocacy Consultants, and AdvoConnection.