NCD Alliance Japan (Secretariat: HGPI) has released a Policy recommendation, Further Promoting Patient and Public Involvement in the Policy-Making Process Steps for Achieving Healthcare Policies That Are Truly Centered on Patients and Citizens.

The following policy recommendations were compiled by the secretariat at HGPI with the aim of further promoting PPI in health policy and are based on discussions held at our advisory board meetings and individual hearings conducted for this project in FY2021 as well as on past HGPI activities.

Please note that these recommendations are a compilation of opinions shared at hearings and discussions held over the course of this project that were gathered by its author, HGPI. They should not be taken to represent the opinions of any specific participant or organization.

Perspective 1: Establishing an environment for PPI

• Discover and educate patient advocate leaders on a continuous basis and provide support for their activities to prevent the burdens of that role from becoming concentrated on certain individuals
• Secure educational opportunities to provide the necessary knowledge and grounding while promoting PPI in the policy-making process
• Create opportunities for patient advocacy organizations from different disease areas to collaborate and interact
• Refer to activities undertaken for PPI in fields of policy other than health policy, and adopt and disseminate practices found to be more effective

Perspective 2: Participation in the policy-making process

• Utilize opportunities for expressing diverse opinions to build recognition of issues among a greater number of patients and citizens
• Make the necessary considerations to ensure patients and citizens with insufficient specialized knowledge can participate in discussions
• Patient and citizen committee members who join discussions must channel society-wide issues in addition to communicating their own issues, and organize and communicate those issues in a manner other stakeholders can understand

Perspective 3: Following up on policy implementation

• Continue working to ensure policies are implemented in the intended manner after they are finalized
• Patients and citizens must be actively involved in policy assessment to further improve policies