Pro-Change’s New Proactive Health Consumer Program featured by the Center for Information Therapy

The Center for Information Therapy (IxCenter) is featuring for the month of April, Pro-Change’s new Proactive Health Consumer Program: Making Health Happen (PHC) through its website’s Monthly Member Spotlight.

The PHC program also will be demonstrated as part of “The Opening Great Debate: Ix and Health 2.0 – Synergies or Tensions?” at the Health 2.0 Meets Ix Conference in Boston on April 22, 2009. It is fitting that the Center for Information Therapy, an early project collaborator, is the first to present the program to the public. The IxCenter’s President, Joshua Seidman, commented, “The PHC tool represents a great step forward in integrating the different types of information that consumers need to navigate an increasingly complex health care delivery system.”

The Proactive Health Consumer Program promotes active participation in managing health and health care costs for one’s self and family using validated assessments and empirically-based guidance. PHC is the first program that integrates health and financial well-being using the integrative construct of proactive health consumerism. The Transtheoretical Model (TTM) based PHC program is designed to guide those not ready, getting ready, and ready to take charge of their health and health care. An individualized, computerized-tailored intervention segues into a dynamic web portal containing interactive activities, health decision making guidance, lifestyle behavior change interventions, and the Healthwise^® Knowledgebase, all designed to promote and reinforce skills and resources needed for health care consumerism.

The four main components of the program address:

1. Sharing in decision making with health care providers;
2. Making informed decisions regarding health plans, providers, tests, treatments, and end-of-life care;
3. Using health services wisely and in a financially responsible way; and
4. Engaging in ongoing health and wellness activities.

For more information about the Proactive Health Consumer program, see our PHC page.