In today’s social and healthcare landscape, talking about “empowerment” does not simply mean involving citizens in decisions that concern them. It means rethinking how services, care pathways, and interventions are designed, evaluated, and improved. This represents a paradigm shift, moving citizens—together with caregivers, families, and communities—from the role of mere recipients to that of co-protagonists in care processes.
Co-design is based on the idea that real needs can fully emerge only when those who experience the service actively participate in its definition. This means including users and caregivers in structured listening sessions, workshops, focus groups, and design thinking activities. The logic is reversed: people are no longer asked to adapt to existing services; services are built starting from their everyday experiences.
For active participation to be possible, individuals must have the ability to understand information, evaluate it, and use it to make informed health decisions. Health literacy thus becomes a decisive element for empowerment. Promoting it means providing clearer information, more accessible materials, more understandable communication, and truly inclusive digital tools. It also means training professionals to communicate more effectively, using diverse approaches that match the skills and habits of the people they serve.
Apps, patient portals, telemonitoring tools, and messaging systems can encourage more immediate and continuous engagement. However, they are truly effective only when designed together with users. Technology should not replace the relationship; it should make it closer, more accessible, and more usable. The result is not just a “better service” but an entire culture of care that is more participatory and able to respond to the complexities of communities and the diversity of needs.
The Master’s Programmes in Healthcare at the University of Parma move precisely in this direction: training professionals capable of facilitating these processes, building meaningful relationships, and guiding innovation with a genuinely citizen-centered perspective.
