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Patient Advocacy Organizations: Institutional Conflicts of Interest, Trust, and Trustworthiness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Extract

Patient advocacy organizations (PAOs) provide patient- and caregiver-oriented education, advocacy, and support services. PAOs are formally organized nonprofit groups that (a) concern themselves with medical conditions or potential medical conditions and (b) have a mission and take actions that seek to help people affected by those medical conditions or to help their families. Examples of PAOs include the American Cancer Society, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and the American Heart Association. These organizations advocate for, and provide services to, millions of people with physical and mental conditions — such as cancer, mental illness, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease — via their outreach, meetings, counseling, websites, and published materials. A PAO usually seeks to raise public awareness of a disease’s symptoms, risk factors, and treatment options and promotes research to cure or to prevent that disease.

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Symposium
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2013

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References

I use the term Patient Advocacy Organizations (PAOs) for the organizaitons I discuss in this article. Other terms commonly used in the literature include: Simply “advocacy groups,” “disease advocacy groups,” “health advocacy groups,” and “health consumer groups.” I distinguish PAOs from professional organizations, which typically focus on advancing their profession as a primary goal. In this article I focus on the advocacy and educational activities, as opposed to focusing upon the more individual clinical services that many of these organizations also provide.Google Scholar
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