Patient empowerment

The patient empowerment concept, a recent outgrowth of the natural health movement, asserts that to be truly healthy, people must bring about changes in their social situations and in the environment that influences their lives, not only in their personal behavior.

According to advocates of the natural health movement, the following are key tenets of patient empowerment:
 * Patients cannot be forced to follow a lifestyle dictated by others.
 * Preventive medicine requires patient empowerment for it to be effective.
 * Patients as consumers have the right to make their own choices and the ability to act on them.