Creating patient-centred healthcare practices: Social marketing tools and strategies

Abstract Social marketing is an effective process to create behaviour change among groups of individuals for the promotion of positive health behaviours. The concept of social marketing has ideal applications for patient-centred care research and practice efforts, particularly when the issues at stake require an understanding of multiple layers of a system, from delivery of healthcare, to the psychology and social epidemiology of patients, to the culture of the community. This paper describes how the social marketing process can be used in the context of encouraging patient-centred care. It also describes the tools used to help pilot communities in Friendly AccessSM, a national effort to improve access to and use of prenatal care and birth services in the USA. The tools introduced here were used to collect and analyse consumer data to aid in health practice delivery decisions. An explanation of how these tools were used by the Friendly AccessSM pilot communities is presented as a case study.