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Occupy with Grace

Once again, this Thanksgiving we are grateful to all the people who keep this mission alive day after day: to ensure that each and every one of us understands, communicates, and has honored their end of life wishes.

Seems almost more fitting than usual this year, the year of making change happen. 2011 gave us the Arab Spring, people on the ground using social media to organize a real political revolution. And now, love it or hate it – it’s the Occupy Wall Street movement that’s got people talking.

Smart people (like our good friend Susannah Fox have made the point that unlike those political and economic movements, our mission isn’t an issue we need to raise our fists about – it’s an issue we have the luxury of being able to hold hands about.

It’s a mission that’s driven by all the personal stories we’ve heard of people who’ve seen their loved ones suffer unnecessarily at the end of their lives.

It’s driven by that ripping-off-the-band-aid feeling of relief you get when you’ve finally broached the subject of end of life wishes with your family, free from the burden of just not knowing what they’d want for themselves, and knowing you could advocate for these wishes if your loved one weren’t able to speak up for themselves.

And it’s driven by knowing that this is a conversation that needs to happen early, and often. One of the greatest gifts you can give the ones you love is making sure you’re all on the same page. In the words of the amazing Atul Gawande, you only die once! Die the way you want. Make sure your loved ones get that same gift. And there is a way to engage in this topic with grace!

Here are the five questions, read them, consider them, answer them (you can securely save your answers at the Engage with Grace, share your answers with your loved ones. It doesn’t matter what your answers are, it just matters that you know them for yourself, and for your loved ones. And they for you.

We all know the power of a group that decides to assemble. In fact, we recently spent an amazing couple days with the members of the Coalition to Transform Advanced Care or C-TAC, working together to channel so much of the extraordinary work that organizations are already doing to improve the quality of care for our country’s sickest and most vulnerable.

Noted journalist Eleanor Clift gave an amazing talk, finding a way to weave humor and joy into her telling of the story she shared in this Health Affairs. She elegantly sums up (as only she can) the reason that we have this blog rally every year:

For too many physicians, that conversation is hard to have, and families, too, are reluctant to initiate a discussion about what Mom or Dad might want until they’re in a crisis, which isn’t the best time to make these kinds of decisions. Ideally, that conversation should begin at the kitchen table with family members, rather than in a doctor’s office.

It’s a conversation you need to have wherever and whenever you can, and the more people you can rope into it, the better! Make this conversation a part of your Thanksgiving weekend, there will be a right moment, you just might not realize how right it was until you begin the conversation.

This is a time to be inspired, informed – to tackle our challenges in real, substantive, and scalable ways. Participating in this blog rally is just one small, yet huge, way that we can each keep that fire burning in our bellies, long after the turkey dinner is gone.

Wishing you and yours a happy and healthy holiday season. Let’s Engage with Grace together.

To learn more please go to www.engagewithgrace.org. This post was developed by Alexandra Drane and the Engage With Grace team.

I personally completed my Advance Directive as a direct result of the Engage with Grace project. Do you need an Advance Directive to share with your family? You can find them here on kp.org.

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Beware of “Experts” and “Gurus”

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the rising importance of digital media in the last few weeks.

What used to be something I took an interest in during my spare time is now a central part of my job, day-in and day-out. In truth, new media is not particularly “new,” but it has evolved quickly in recent years. Fortunately, I’m comfortable with technology and have been able to learn new technologies and be an early adopter, as appropriate, for my clients/employers.

I’m very proud to say that I took my first (and only) HTML class in 1994, developed my first client website in 1998 and started this blog in 2004. I even met my son’s father on a listserv in 1997 — long before online dating was trendy! Digital and social technologies became a part of both my personal and work life when the domain was reserved for self-proclaimed geeks. Today, digital technologies are more than mainstream, they are a way of life. There are endless platforms available for promoting brands and engaging audience. As a result, virtually everyone in the PR, communications, marketing and advertising industry seems to be in catch-up mode, clamoring to prove their expertise in the space.

Earlier this month at the PR News Digital PR Summit, I had the good fortune of presenting on a panel about Creating a Digital Dream Team (scroll through PR News TV at PR News Online for an interview by me on the subject). During Q&A, I was asked what kind of expertise I look for when I am hiring someone for a digital media role. My answer was direct and, to my entertainment, widely Tweeted: “I’d be skeptical of people who bill themselves as ‘gurus’ or ‘experts’ in #SM. We’re all making it up as we go.”

Ultimately, expertise in the digital space is not about knowing the trendy new platforms nor even about successfully executing one or two campaigns. When I evaluate whether people can be successful in the digital space, I want to know they will begin with a clear strategy (what are we trying to accomplish?) and are willing to invest the time to develop meaningful relationships with the audiences they are trying to engage. I want to know that they will fully integrate digital and social strategies into their overall plans, not see digital or social platforms as separate programs. The ability to understand the value of integration is what matters most to me.

Diving deeper into the subject of integration, I recently published “Integrating Social Media into PR Plans: What You Need to Know” in the PRSA Strategist.

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Chronic Conditions as a “Market Segment”

So I seem to have finally Tweeted something controversial.

While that was not my intent, the following Tweet caught the attention of @iam_spartacus, who reached out to me both via this blog and Twitter. (Correction: My Tweet initially caught the attention of @CALpumper. She reached out via this blog and then posted on hers. @iam_spartacus alerted me to the discussion via Twitter.)

What I thought was a simple Tweet led to this blog post: http://randomlycapitalized.wordpress.com/2010/01/21/welcome-to-the-dmob-lifestyle/

Given the level of anger and frustration directed toward me on her blog, I shared the following response there.

Hi. I am the Tweeter with whom you are angry. And I thank you for reaching out.

I get the sense that my Tweet (or at least my intent) is being misunderstood. I think the heart of the anger around this Tweet was my use of the word “lifestyle.” The use of that word referred specifically to the type of magazine that Better Homes and Gardens had created — a “lifestyle magazine.”

I apologize for not making that more clear in my original post.

To further explain, I was in a grocery store and for the first time, I saw a copy of Diabetic Living magazine. Seeing that Better Homes and Gardens identified the escalation of a chronic condition as enough of a trend to create a glossy magazine, in the midst of a traditional media downturn, made me take notice.

Seeing that magazine made me mindful of the recent increase in marketing efforts specifically targeting consumers living with diabetes (late night commercials featuring cookbooks for diabetics are what first came to mind). Given that I am not living with diabetes, I can’t speak to my reaction as a consumer. However, as someone who does work in both health care and PR, it disturbed me to realize that there are enough people in the US now living with diabetes to constitute a “market segment.”

You write above that you are among the many in the nation who cannot afford a healthy lifestyle. In my opinion, it’s a sad commentary on the state of our nation that good health is considered a luxury. I wish I had an easy answer, but sadly, I am often as angry and frustrated as you.

(For the record, I do work for both a health plan and a care delivery system. However, all that I Tweet about and blog about are my own personal opinions.)

The more I think about this subject,  I am curious to hear other people’s opinions. Is the rise in direct marketing to people living with diabetes a good or a bad thing? Perhaps the appearance of these types of mass market products are a positive opportunity to improve understanding of diabetes, and ideally a tool for helping those with diabetes live a more healthy lifestyle.

I just can’t seem to get beyond the concept that we (as a nation) have allowed the rate of diabetes to increase so drastically that the population living with diabetes is now viewed as a “market segment.”

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