Why Engage?

The main reason for becoming engaged is to achieve better health results and patient care, not only for yourself, but also for other patients by sharing your needs, experiences, and perspectives. Also, you pay for health care through your taxes and so it makes sense from both a financial and personal perspective that you should be involved in decisions that affect your health care.

Your involvement will not only help to ensure that patients’/publics’ experiences, values, and priorities are considered and can then enrich decisions, but also should:

• lead to greater transparency within the health care system
• increase your level as well as other patients’ levels of trust and confidence in the system
• help you and others to better understand and have greater/increased acceptance of health care recommendations and decisions.³