Imagine a society where everyone has the means and opportunity to make choices that lead to the healthiest lives possible––a society where health is valued by all, and no one is excluded because of chronic illness or other limitations. This is what we call a Culture of Health, and it’s what, in collaboration with others, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is working to build in the United States.
We know that to achieve this ambitious vision, we must look to––and learn from––promising approaches across industries, disciplines and geographic borders. This is why we recently visited Jönköping, a small county in south-central Sweden, where patient and citizen engagement has brought about remarkable results: kidney failure patients operate dialysis machines on their own schedule, complex patients—such as people with schizophrenia—actively participate in designing their own care and children’s preferences and experiences are listened to, so services can improve from the children’s point of view.
[For more of this story, written by Galina Gheihman and Laura Leviton, go to http://www.rwjf.org/en/culture...ent_and_citizen.html]
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