Maia Laing and Flo Rosser: Advocating for Yourself as a Patient

Right now, somewhere in a hospital or a clinic or a doctor's office, someone is second-guessing themselves, wondering if they're being too much, too loud, too insistent, and then deciding to just go along with it.

I've seen it, and I've seen what it costs people.

Today, I'm sitting down with Maia, a patient advocate doing powerful work in the sickle cell community, and Flo, a healthcare worker and union advocate who fights for patients and the people caring for them.

Together, they bring something rare to this conversation.

What it actually looks like to advocate for yourself inside a system that isn't always designed to hear you, why that's so much harder for some of us than others, and the practical tools that can shift that dynamic.

If you've ever left the doctor's office feeling like you didn't say what you needed to say, this episode is for you.

Welcome to our session today for Octavia's Cure.

We'll be speaking to two people in healthcare who know what it means to advocate for their rights.

One person is a patient and one person is a healthcare worker, and so we'll hear from all of those perspectives.

I want to introduce you to our speakers today.

Maia Liang is a passionate health care policy leader and advocate with decades of experience dedicated to improving health equity and patient outcomes.

She was most recently chief policy officer of Sick Cells.

She brings both professional expertise and personal insight as someone living with sickle cell disease, driving forward initiatives that expand access to care and influence meaningful policy change.

Maya has built an extensive career in public health and government affairs.

She believes that elevating the voices of patients and creating inclusive systems leads to better health care for individuals with chronic conditions.

And she works tirelessly to make that vision a reality for the sickle cell community and beyond.

Next, we have Florence Rosser.

Flo is a fierce healthcare advocate with more than 15 years of experience as a medical office specialist at Mount Sinai West.

She also serves as a union delegate advocating for her colleagues and her patients' well-beings.

She believes that a positive work environment translates into improved patient care and works to realize the vision for herself, her colleagues, and her patients.

So welcome to both of you.

Thank you so much for being on this session of Octavia's Cure.

Thank you for having us.

Awesome.

So I'm going to start, you know, this session really wants, I wanted us to kind of have a conversation, this conversation at this time, because we are in a time where healthcare really is facing some major challenges.

After COVID, a lot of the healthcare facilities that many of us go to are facing some financial challenges.

And now with the current administration and HR1, we know that we're going to face more budget cuts that'll lead to more issues with access to healthcare.

That means that as a patient and as someone who may take care of other individuals, the way that we advocate for our health care really matters.

And so I wanted to have this conversation about what does it look like to work hard to protect your health, to push back if you face a hard situation within the health care setting, to get your health care team to help you the most, to get your insurance to help you the most.

People are really asking these questions and I want us to be able to answer it today.

So I want each of you to introduce yourselves a little bit more and add a little bit of color to what brings you to the spaces that you're in now.

So I would love for you to start, Maia.

Please tell us about your experience in health care as a patient advocate and as a chronic patient yourself.