Rheuminations: Why I Don’t Use the Term ‘Stakeholder’

Pull Up the Stakes

Perhaps because of their intensive involvement into Native American health projects, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) discourages the use of the term stakeholder and considers it potentially stigmatizing language.¹⁴ Instead of substituting one word for another, the CDC recommends a more nuanced approach, one that I agree with. Working partners, community collaborators and others can be named specifically as is. That dignifies who they are and characterizes their roles in much clearer language. Consultants, contributors, coalition members, advocacy groups, sponsors and funders are all terms that bring greater clarity to the issue.

Inherent in this stance is that the stakeholder is a mythical concept. We construct it based on our collective history, which is steeped in many negative facets including dispossession and intolerance. But we can undo this, too, by judicious use of language. We can demythologize stakeholder and recognize there are deeper things that need to be changed for us to have more equitable and inclusive approaches to healthcare and, in particular, rheumatology.

Rheumatology, and medicine as a whole, inherits a lot from different fields. It is, in many ways, the product of what we choose it to be. We aspire to be inclusive, equitable and diverse. Toward that end, we employ language to demonstrate this commitment. But when we adopt terminology rooted in the opposite, we end up in a situation that is not necessarily much better.

I hope I’ve convinced you to avoid using the word stakeholder as much as you can. No matter who you are, you are a key stakeholder in contributor to the world of rheumatology.

Bharat Kumar, MD, MME, FACP, FAAAAI, RhMSUS, is the associate program director of the rheumatology fellowship training program at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, and the physician editor of The Rheumatologist. Follow him on Twitter @BharatKumarMD.

References

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