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The Fifth Annual Private Professional Patient Advocates Week – is this week – March 16 to 22 -and I’m here to share tales of the growth of our profession.

Can it be that patient advocacy as a profession is now so “old” ?  Granted, there were a handful of advocates practicing long before we began to quantify and qualify the profession.  The year 2009, with the launch of NAHAC and APHA / AdvoConnection, marked the beginning of the growth that would make us a recognized profession across North America.

Some background:

From the 30-ish people who joined AdvoConnection in 2009 – for free! – with a belief that this might be an interesting alliance full of possibilities… to the almost 550 members of APHA today, and dozens more who aren’t yet on our current radar…  yes, growing.

So, as I did last year, I thought I’d share a profile of our membership and achievements:

• We hail from 38 states and 2 Canadian provinces, with more members from California than any other state or province.)
• We are international, with members from Australia, Russia, South Africa, Spain and the UK.
• We represent advocates who have been performing advocacy services for 30+ years, those who are just exploring the opportunity to perform advocacy services as a business, and everywhere in between.
• Our APHA members provide at least 40 unique services to their clients.
• About half our membership is signed up to use our APHA Forum where we discuss every topic imaginable (the other half could participate, too, but they’ve never signed up.)
• We have held 50 teleconferences with experts to help members build their practices.
• The Alliance and AdvoConnection have been mentioned in the likes of O Magazine, Health Magazine, Forbes, CBS TV, CNN and others.  Its members have benefited from dozens of local press mentions.