Consumer Engagement: Be Involved

What do we mean by consumer engagement?

Lung Foundation Australia is committed to enhancing our partnerships with consumers, carers and families, keeping them at the heart of everything we do. We class consumers as people living with lung disease or lung cancer, carers, family members, and anyone with a strong interest in lung health and prevention. Our work centres on the needs of those living with these conditions, and is underpinned by the values of compassion, courage, respect and collaboration. 

Our Consumer Engagement Strategy demonstrates how you can actively partner with us in the planning, implementation and improvement of our services. This includes a range of options so that consumers can decide when and how they want to be involved.

View our Consumer Engagement Strategy

What does consumer engagement look like?

Lung Foundation Australia aims to continue to grow the consumer engagement program by better understanding our consumers and how they wish to connect with us. We want to partner with consumers ready to contribute in a way that suits their current situation. We know our consumers partner with us in ways including: 

• Raising awareness
• community advocacy 
• volunteering 
• sharing lived experiences
• participating in peer support
• education and learning through research

Lung Foundation Australia has identified five key areas where consumers partnering with us can have the most impact. These have been designed to offer consumers a way to contribute that is meaningful to their interests, experiences, and availability. These key areas are: 

• Advocacy: Advocates can assist in changing public policy and can support advocacy initiatives with a focus on government relations.
• Champion: Consumer Champions are ambassadors for Lung Foundation Australia and are active in their communities. They raise awareness of lung conditions and lung health (prevention), participate in fundraising events to lift the community visibility of Lung Foundation Australia.
• Research: Consumer Researchers will participate in research development, including opportunities to be on research panels, inform research design, review research materials and be involved in research implementation as participants in established research.
• Program Advisory: Lung Foundation Australia’s Consumer Program Advisors provide a strong consumer voice that may help develop our strategic priorities, business planning and programs, including assisting in defining gaps and areas of greatest need and design of our educational resources and programs.
• Media & Communications: Media and Communications Consumer Advisors assist with crafting public messaging, sharing their stories of lived experience, which may contribute to media activities and campaigns, blogs for our website or key fundraising campaigns. 

Consumer engagement process

Lung Foundation Australia have progressed several Consumer Engagement activities to build and enhance our consumer partnerships, including:

• Conducted a review of the Consumer Advisory Committee Terms of Reference
• Established an information Consumer Representative program for our community to share their experiences and perspectives informally within areas of interest to them
• Facilitated virtual consumer briefing for our consumer representatives to hear from senior leadership on key projects across Lung Foundation Australia

What’s next for consumer engagement?

Our consumers bring a wealth of experience. Many, however, have expressed the desire to access training to lift their capacity to make an impact. Training can support consumers to turn individual lived experiences into opportunities for shared lessons, and can increase understanding of research and program administration. Training can also support other skill development activities such as those related to public speaking or resource development.

If you are interested in further discussion on consumer engagement please complete the form below.