Partnering with patients, families, and communities

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Collaborating with patients, families, and communities is a core principle of family medicine. However, the health care system in the United States has grown increasingly complex, fragmented, and difficult to navigate. This system, focused on disease-specific care delivered by specialists, often treats patients as the objects of care rather than as partners in care. Family Medicine for America’s Health (FMAHealth) offers an opportunity to challenge the status quo in collaborative care through enhanced patient outreach and community engagement. With a central focus on improving health and achieving the Triple Aim, the FMAHealth initiative recognizes that successful transformation of the US health care system requires collaborative partnerships between clinicians, patients, families, and com­munities. Patient and population-level outcomes can be improved through shared decision making; application of new technology; and authentic partnerships with patient, families, and communities. Broader collaboration in practice transformation, research, and policymaking can lead to identification of common goals and mutually embraced transformation. The discipline of family medicine aspires to encourage patients, families, and communities to demand change as consumers, as citizens, and as voters.