Main description:

Advocacy is a broad term that covers activities aimed at increasing attention, awareness, information, nursing, treatment, and support to improve the outcome of patients. These actions can be focused directly towards patients or indirectly via third parties. Although advocacy is present in all medical specialties, neurology in particular finds itself in need of strong advocacy tools as the diagnosis, treatment, long-term care and associated resource, and social
issues have become increasingly complex. While some physicians implicitly or explicitly act as advocates, there is a lack of holistic research in order to clarify the meaning of advocacy along with concrete methods and strategies.

Advocacy in Neurology provides an integrated approach to the concept of advocacy in neurology. Structured in five sections, the book begins by explaining the term "advocacy" in general before elaborating on the areas of interest within neurology. The text goes on to offer concrete strategies and tools for clinicians to deploy advocacy in their daily work, and then discusses specific neurological diseases to point out and explain where advocacy is, or could be, beneficial. The book ends
with an outlook, presentation of results, and an ending conclusion.

Advocacy in Neurology offers a practical perspective on advocacy activities in neurology, aiming to show when and why they are important for neurology.

Contents:

Section 1: What is advocacy?
1: Wolfgang Grisold, Walter Struhal, and Thomas Grisold: What is advocacy?
2: Thomas Grisold and Oliver Lukitsch: Taking an epistemological perspective on advocacy
3: Wolfgang Maderthaner and Wolfgang Grisold: Advocacy in history and culture
4: Jan J. Heimans: Ethical issues in neurology
5: Tissa Wijeratne, Essie Low, and Christopher Neil: Physician, autonomy, and pharmaceutical industry
6: Mohammad Wasay: Advocacy, campaigning , lobbying: Good or bad?
Section 2: Why is advocacy needed?
7: Wolfgang Grisold: Knowledge and science is not enough
8: Mohammad Wasay: Perspectives on advocacy of medical doctors
9: Hanneke Zwinkels: Advocacy and the perspective of (neurology) nursing
10: Helen Bulbeck: Patient and caregiver advocacy
11: Francoise Van Hemelryck: Patient involvement in European cancer societies: The example of ECCO - the European CanCer Organization
12: Mustapha El Alaoui Faris: Advocacy for neurology in migrants
13: Apoorva Pauranik: Advocacy for neurology: Local, regional, national
14: Raad Shakir: Advocacy in the international arena
15: Jes Olesen and Frederic Destrebecq: Working with others, the lesson of the European Brain Council
16: Richard Pichler: SOS children's villages: Re-discovering advocacy to increase relevance and impact. A high level case study
Section 3: What tools can be used for advocacy?
17: Walter Struhal and Thomas Grisold: Project management techniques for advocates
18: Wolfgang Grisold, Anna Klicpera, and Thomas Grisold: International advocacy: Case studies and lessons learnt
19: Birgit Kofler: Using PR tools for advocacy
Section 4: Advocacy in different neurological diseases
20: Tissa Wijeratne, Sheila Crewther, and David Crewther: Advocacy for stroke
21: Christoph Thalheim: Two decades of patient advocacy in Multiple Sclerosis: The success story of the European MS Platform
22: Albert C. Ludolph: Advocacy in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
23: Elaine C. Jones and John D. England: Neuromuscular disorders and advocacy
24: Francesca Mancini and Carlo Colosimo: Advocacy for movement disorders
25: Riccardo Soffietti, Christine Marosi, Roberta Ruda, and Wolfgang Grisold: Advocacy for brain tumours
26: Gorazd B. Stokin: Advocacy in dementia
27: Fritz Zimprich: Advocating for orphan diseases in neurology
28: David Oliver: Palliative care
29: Jules C. Beal and Solomon L. Moshe: Advocacy for epilepsy: From the shadows to centre stage: Stand up for epilepsy
30: Timothy J. Steiner and Jes Olesen: Advocacy for patients with headache
31: Ligia Onofrei and A. Gordon Smith: Advocacy for patients with neuropathic pain
Section 5: Outlook, follow-up, results, ending, conclusion, and debriefing
32: Wolfgang Grisold and Thomas Grisold: Continuation or ending and 'debriefing'
33: Wolfgang Grisold, Walter Struhal, and Thomas Grisold: Results, outlook, and goals of this book