At TEDMED this October I found myself trading tweets with @DrPatriciaFitz, a new name to me. We met, and I learned she’s the Wellness editor for The Huffington Post – which is about the biggest baddest high-publicity blog in the universe.
She was already familiar with participatory medicine and my TEDx talk. We talked, and then she invited me to blog for them! I was thrilled, because as Wikipedia says, “The Huffington Post has an active community, with over one million comments made on the site each month.”
For the first time this moves the e-patient conversation onto “the big stage” of mass media – stepping outside of healthcare social media. And if you want to change culture (which I do), you can’t do it by staying in the circles that discuss culture – you have to swim in the soup itself.
(Savvy Web citizens also know that HuffPo has had some controversies. That never stopped me – I only say what I believe, anyway.)
Our introductory interview ends with “Look for his upcoming articles on patient empowerment here at HuffPost Healthy Living.” I’m not sure when my first post will go up, but I don’t expect it to affect my blogging here and at e-patients.net.
p.s. This is a good example of the high quality networking that happens at TEDMED. Attending is beastly expensive, but it’s awesome that the live video lets you watch, and the live tweets let you connect with the conversation – whether or not you’re there in person.
Congrats!
This is great, Dave.
Thank you, Dave, for your energy, persistence and creativity. Huffington Post will be even better for your contributions.
Hi Dave, Congratulations! I found your blog from that very blog post on HUFF POST so I’m really happy to have discovered you.
My best friend has rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and cancer and I’ve been helping taking care of her. She was told by the medical doctors that there is nothing they can do medically for her, to go home and prepare to die. Obviously, we thought differently and went to the computer and started our journey in finding alternative methods of treating disease.
I’m happy to say my friend Tamira is doing much better. Its a long journey ahead of us, but its hopeful (not dreadful). We’ve made major changes and have been blogging about our journey to share what we’ve learned too.
I completely agree with you – patients have the keys to the kingdom when it comes to finding the answers to wellness. We are always open to learning more and happy to share what we’ve learned to those who want to hear her story.
Cheers!
Gayle