Focus Areas
The Physician-Consumer Alliances were collaborations between physician and consumer groups to promote quality of care, spur fair allocation of scarce resources, strengthen accountability to patients, and enforce standards of ethics for healthcare professionals. In supporting such partnerships, the Medicine as a Profession program (MAP) has focused on helping underserved communities gain access to healthcare and ensuring that consumers’ concerns are represented in health policy debates.
This funding initiative closed in 2002. A gathering of grantees that year revealed that, despite the many kinds of joint partnerships, all alliances shared similar approaches to determining why and how they should work together, identifying and raising awareness about issues of common concern, and seeking solutions. Securing physician participation in community-oriented projects has not been easy. Though the concept of the physician as a patient’s greatest advocate is embedded in the relationship, it is typically viewed as a one-on-one dynamic in a medical office, not in the political sphere. However, successful alliances will help to educate some physicians about the broader role they can play as advocates.
