National Partnership for Women & Families

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From the desk of ... Eva Powell, Health IT

Consumer Advocates Connect on Inaugural Webinar

February 3, 2012 | Health Care > Health Information Technology (IT)

We had a fabulous inaugural conversation for state-based consumer advocates working on health IT implementation this week! For those of you who missed it, you can listen to the recording here.

If Monday was any indication, future discussions will be can’t-miss events. We learned a great deal about what kinds of issues state and local consumer advocates are facing, including:

  1. Engagement in eligibility and enrollment integration with health IT
  2. Advocating for capability to connect consumers to culturally-competent health materials
  3. Advocacy in a local effort working to connect social services and clinical services for care coordination
  4. Direct work with consumers, helping them to understand what health IT is and become comfortable with it
  5. Advocacy in an effort to connect mental and behavioral health services to clinical services for purposes of care coordination
  6. Advocacy for consumer-friendly privacy policies governing health information exchange

Our participants had lots of fabulous suggestions for how the National Partnership can support the great work all of you are already doing. In the coming weeks you can look for the following from us:

  1. A schedule of upcoming discussions. You are encouraged to attend as many as you can!
  2. Resources for use by state and local advocates to help engage non-consumer stakeholders.
  3. An inventory of who is working on health IT in the consumer advocate world, and what they are doing.

We here at the National Partnership are SO excited about working with all of you our colleagues in bringing the consumer voice to these critical discussions about health IT! Please be in touch — we want your feedback about how we can make this site more useful, what resources you need, and what your experiences working on this issue have been. Post a comment here, or send us an email by clicking the link above.

And don’t forget to spread the word about this site and the CPeH community to your fellow consumer advocates working on health IT implementation!

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