What is Consumers Connect?
Consumers Connect was created for people with personal or professional experience of healthcare or health policy to help everyday people navigate the health system. It’s a place to share knowledge and network with other like-minded people that want to contribute to improving the healthcare system for everyone.
What makes a strong Consumer Advocate?
In our experience, three simple criteria make for a strong consumer advocate. Any one of these helps to develop relevant insights that can help others:
- A career in healthcare or policy
- Experience of caring for a family member or friend
- Personal experience with ill health or injury
Promoting Diversity & Inclusion in the Health System
Part of our mission at Health Issues Centre is to foster and promote inclusion and diverse representation within the health system. This means ensuring that the needs of all people are represented – not just the consumers most able to participate.
Groups often left out of consultation are often the most marginalised, vulnerable and hard to reach. They include people from culturally diverse backgrounds where language may be a barrier, and people who are less able to engage for practical reasons – such as young mothers, homeless people and isolated elderly people living in the community.
As a consumer advocate, you can have a role in ensuring these often under-represented groups have a voice by understanding the issues that face them and advocating on their behalf.
If standing up for everyday people is your passion, consider the many ways to get involved.
Free Resource Library
Health Issues Centre curates a range of handy resources to support consumer advocates. We also provide a Consumer Advocates Toolkit that you can download here.