• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

Susannah Fox

I help people navigate health and technology.

  • Home
  • Writing
    • greatest hits
    • beauty and wonder
    • demographics
    • featured commenters
    • health data
    • key people
    • peer-to-peer health care
    • positive patterns
    • public Q&A
    • trends & principles
  • Research
    • How Young People Use Digital Media to Manage Their Health
    • Digital Health Practices Among Teens and Young Adults: Key Findings
    • Fact sheet: teens and young adults, social media, online health resources
    • Fact sheet: differences between young women and young men in their use of social media, online health resources
    • Pew Research: Americans’ Data Worries
  • About me
    • Now
    • Curriculum vitae
  • Upcoming events

The presence of patients changes public conversations about health care

October 4, 2010 By Susannah Fox 1 Comment

I’m attending a LOT of conferences this fall and over & over I am seeing the power of having patients in the room. e-Patient Connections was a wonderful and well-documented example (in blogs, on Twitter, plus the large in-person audience) as will be Health 2.0 San Francisco.

But the one that turned my head around was a smaller meeting here in DC that is getting less attention in the blogosphere/Twittersphere, “Online Social Networks and Smoking Cessation: Strategic Research Opportunities.” It was sponsored by the Schroeder Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies, which is part of Legacy. About 100 people from many disciplines – academics, activists, counselors, federal agency reps, and (in the “patient” role) ex-smokers.

Prior to the meeting we were all sent a huge briefing book of academic journal articles and the morning’s speakers focused on the theories laid out in those articles, many of which didn’t directly relate to smoking cessation. My favorite, of course, was Nicholas Christakis, author of Connected, who had not only the most interesting data on social networks and smoking cessation, but delivered it in beautiful data visualizations.

Directly after lunch, five ex-smokers took the stage under the title “End User Panel” which I found a bit odd (end user of cigarettes? end user of social network sites? end user of health care?). After all the theory covered in the morning, it was refreshing to hear from people who actually used online social networks to quit smoking and help others to quit. They got more questions than any other speaker, including Christakis, as researchers lined up to gain insights about what worked and what didn’t.

Later in the day we broke up into working groups to discuss what research questions we would tackle if we had unlimited funds (ie, let your imaginations run wild). Each group had its share of academics and front-line advocates, so it made for an interesting exchange of ideas. Example: the PhD who said, “what we really need is a theoretical framework,” and the smoking-cessation counselor who immediately countered, “what we really need is a strategy to stay ahead of the tobacco industry.” Need I say more about the power of having a diversity of perspectives in any discussion of health behavior?

For more on the same topic, please see:

The business of patient engagement: should consumers be regulated? by e-Patient Dave (where I first posted this comment)

Patient Voices at CHCF’s Chronic Disease Care Conference, by me (2008)

Patient Involvement Makes People Smile, by Ted Eytan (2008)

Blogging Crohnology.MD’s creative process (with a patient at the helm), by John Liesveld and Nikolai Kirienko (2010)

Patients bringing it all to the table, by Regina Holliday (2010)

Share this:

  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: pts as teachers Tagged With: #epatcon, #health2con, Connected, health 2.0, Legacy, Nicholas Christakis, patients included, Schroeder Institute, smoking cessation

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Susannah Fox says

    December 23, 2011 at 10:36 am

    The paper resulting from this October 2010 meeting has just been published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research:

    Online Social Networks and Smoking Cessation: A Scientific Research Agenda
    http://www.jmir.org/2011/4/e119/

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Before Footer

Don't miss a post

Enter your email address and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Recent Comments

  • Susannah Fox on A survey about clinical trial support groups: “Hi Diane, here is one article I found about Tirzepatide — a drug that’s in the headlines these days since…” Mar 9, 10:37
  • Diane on A survey about clinical trial support groups: “I’d love to hear about clinical trials of the new weight-loss drugs believed to help people with diabetes and pre-diabetes” Mar 8, 12:15
  • Dave deBronkart on Lessons learned about hospice care: “I want to add some things I’ve learned in the years since you posted this. First, it should be noted…” Feb 20, 16:44

Footer

Follow me on Twitter

My Tweets

Topics

  • Beauty and Wonder
  • Demographics
  • Key People
  • Participatory Research
  • Peer-to-Peer Health Care
  • Positive Patterns
  • Public Q&A
  • Trends and Principles

popular posts

  • Hack needed: Tiny pills, trembling hands
  • Caregiving is not a “career break”
  • Sunflowers turn to each other for help
  • Mystery solved. Again.

Explore

Copyright Susannah Fox © 2023 · WordPress · Log in