Share4Rare toolkit for patient advocacy
Establishing your goals & objectives (SMART)
As an advocate, you are trying to effect change for the benefit of your represented group. Use the SMART model to identify your goals.
SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Acceptable, Realistic, and Time-bound and is a method used to give directions to what you want to achieve and provides clear and simple guidelines for defining and managing goals and objectives. The key takeaway of the SMART formula is that it forces you to become very concise with what you want to achieve, leaving no space for vagueness or interpretation.
Use the template to stablish your SMART goals available in the Resources.
Long and short term goals
Once your SMART goals are in place, consider splitting them into long-term goals and short-term goals.
The long-term goal should be what it is that you are ultimately working towards, such as universal access to a new drug within the next 5 years for all the patient body. Short-term goals represent the smaller steps that you’ll need to take in order to reach the long-term goal, such as access for a high-need group of patients within the next year.
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How long it takes you to reach your goals will depend on how well you have defined them and how clearly you have outlined the path to reach them. Achievability and timeliness will be key in this.