BACKGROUND Health advocacy groups provide education, raise public awareness, and engage in legislative, scientific, and regulatory processes to advance funding and treatments for many diseases. Despite a high burden of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in the United States, public awareness and research funding lag behind those for other disease states. We undertook this study of patients receiving ...

Senior Community Centers of SanDiego (SCC) is an independent, nonprofıt organization focused on improving the health and well-being of low-income eniors in the San Diego area. It is based on a unique etwork of symbiotic relationships among the Gary nd Mary West Foundation, West Health Institute, harp Health Care, the Union of Pan Asian Communiies’ (UPAC’s) Positive Solutions Program, the Conume...

Patient advocacy is based on the premise that people have the right to make their own choices about their health care. Personal advocacy is centred on the experiential expertise of the individual affected by the condition, whereas group advocacy is grounded on patient-centred strategies and actions. The first patient advocacy groups for arthritis were set up over 20 years ago in the USA and hav...

Efforts at cost containment through regionalization have led to reduced services in several rural emergency departments (EDs) in Canada. As a result, questions have been raised about patient safety and equitable access to care, compelling physicians to advocate for their patients. Few published reports on physicians’ advocacy experiences pertaining to rural EDs exist. We describe our experience...

Over the past 20 years, cancer patient advocacy groups have demonstrated that patient engagement in cancer care is essential to improving patient quality of life and outcomes. Bladder cancer patient advocacy only began 10 years ago in the United States, but is now expanding around the globe with non-profit organizations established in Canada, the United Kingdom and Italy, and efforts underway i...