Growing a Healthy Ecosystem for Patient and Citizen Partnerships

Patient and citizen engagement is taking root in a number of healthcare organizations. These initiatives show promising results but require a supportive environment to bring systemic and sustainable impacts. In this synthesis article, we propose an ecosystemic perspective on engagement in health, outlining key elements at the individual, organizational and systemic levels supporting reciprocal and effective relationships among all partners to provide conditions for the co-production of health and care. We argue that growing a healthy engagement ecosystem requires: (1) building local and national "hubs" to facilitate learning and capacity building across engagement domains, populations and contexts; (2) supporting reciprocal partnerships based on co-leadership; and (3) strengthening capacities for research, evaluation and co-training of all partners to support reflective engagement practices that bring about effective change.