Health activism to health ‘consumers’

Many community groups concerned with health issues – women’s organisations, disease-oriented patient support groups and older-citizens organisations – were formed long before their designation as ‘consumer’ groups. Members of health groups founded in the 1960s and 1970s understood themselves as activists for social change, not ‘consumers’. They challenged established models of health care and mobilised to redress inequities of access to care and inequalities of power between the medical profession and the ‘lay’ population. The major campaign in this period was for the establishment of universal health insurance.