Anti-Fragility: Promoting Patient Empowerment through Effective Communication

In 2025, it is paramount that we shift from a model of fragility and dependence to one of empowerment and overall resilience. Despite meaning well, medical providers of all types often reinforce patients’ feelings of physical decline and helplessness instead of promoting adaptability and active participation in care. The way that we communicate with patients matters. Often, it matters more than any care that we can provide. Negative narratives associated with movement are far too common in healthcare, and providers must adapt. Attendees of this session will learn ways to improve patient empowerment and guide patients to a thriving place in their health journey through effective narratives, analogies and self-efficacy strategies.

Learning Objectives:
• Objective 1: Define the concept of anti-fragility and explain its importance in the context of patient care.
• Objective 2: Identify common narratives and beliefs that contribute to patients feeling fragile, including language used by healthcare providers and societal misconceptions about pain and aging.
• Objective 3: Describe strategies to promote self-efficacy and self-care in patients, including the use of empowering language, motivational interviewing, and gradual exposure to movement.
• Objective 4: Recognize barriers to physical activity and health literacy, including kinesiophobia, chronic pain.
• Objective 5: Apply principles of effective communication to reframe pain, reduce fear, and encourage sustainable physical activity using the biopsychosocial model and patient-centered analogies.

Hourly Breakdown:
• Introduction to Anti-Fragility and Why Patients Feel Fragile (~10 minutes)
• Promoting Self-Efficacy and Self-Care (~10 minutes)
• Barriers to Movement/Health Literacy Challenges (~10 minutes)
• Making Movement Meaningful and Simple (~10 minutes)
• Rewriting the Narrative (~10 minutes)

This course is presented as part of the ACA Engage 2026 educational programming.

This course is worth 1 CE credit in ACA-approved and PACE-accepted states. CEUs have been applied for in California, Florida, Georgia, and Texas.

View a list of accepted and approved states.

PACE ID: ON121262

Adam Pembleton, DC

Adam Pembleton, DC is a chiropractor at St. Luke’s University Health Network in the Lehigh Valley, PA. He is currently a resident in the inaugural year of the network’s chiropractic residency program. He collaborates with a variety of providers in an integrated clinical practice to provide patient-centered, evidence-based care while also participating in rotations to learn about the inner workings of a multidisciplinary healthcare team in a regional healthcare network. He found his passion for working with people in pain and promoting exercise-based treatments while at The Pennsylvania State University, where he obtained a Bachelor of Science Degree in Kinesiology. He obtained his Doctor of Chiropractic degree from the University of Bridgeport.