Advocacy skills and strategies for patient education managers

In an era of increasing competition for patient education resources, patient education managers need to employ effective advocacy skills in order for their programs to continue to grow. In order to identify the advocacy skills and strategies currently being used, a series of four invitational seminars were convened around the country to allow patient education managers to share the approaches they have found to be useful. This paper summarizes those skills and strategies which fall into three categories: general advocacy, preparation, and implementation.