Recognizing Success in Advocacy: Stories on the Ride.

Danny van Leeuwen Health Hats
12 min readNov 15, 2022

Patient advocates from the Healthe Voices 2022 conference describe how they recognize success in their advocacy. Snapshots of diverse lived experiences.

Proem

Several listeners asked, Danny, when did you first realize health was fragile? My parents and grandparents were Holocaust survivors. I attach a photo of my father’s father, Opa Henri, with my Uncle Nat when he returned home after being traded from Bergen Belson as a prisoner of war. Another long story. My mother never spoke of it when we were young, but my maternal grandmother, Lillie Herzog, and my father, Ruben, did. So, I learned much about the fragility of life from a young age. My father died at 45 when I was 19. That most life-changing event knocked my life into a new orbit.

How do you recognize success in your advocacy work? In this episode, we listen to answers to the second question I asked of 26 people at the Healthe Voice Conference. Almost everyone answered some variation of I feel success when I affect one person’s life. I won’t repeat that response twenty times. Instead, I’ll share a few of the permutations and experiences some people made. I will link the…

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Danny van Leeuwen Health Hats

Empowering people traveling together toward best health. Pt with MS, care partner, nurse, informaticist, leader. Focusing on learning what works for people