Editorial: Consumer engagement in health and well-being: Theoretical and empirical perspectives in patient centered medicine

The growing understanding of the key role of people in improving healthy behaviors and clinical outcomes has led healthcare to search for innovative ways to foster individuals' roles in the care and health promotion processes. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that making consumers active agents in their health and care is up today recognized as a key priority for services' innovation. In the era of participatory health, the concept of “engagement” may be particularly promising to give consumers a starring role in managing their health and well-being. The healthcare field has recently introduced the term “engagement” in its lexicon to call for a renewed partnership among the actors (i.e., patients, caregivers, practitioners, decision makers…) implied in the health and care management. Overall, the concept of engagement attempts to offer a compass for action in the current complex and uncertain context of healthcare design and health promotion initiatives. The main aim is giving (back) a leading role to patients and taking them on board for a more efficient and effective process of care delivery and of health promotion initiatives. Furthermore, consumer health engagement can be the key to systematically diagnose and make sense of the different organizational, relational, and psychological components in play in the dynamic exchange between “demand” and “supply” of health and care. This challenge could or even should be integrated with a complex attempt coming from the literature on medicine and regarding a new medical model that should be offered to patients/clients/consumers: that of a patient centered medicine, based on a biopsychological epistemology