Assigning People as Number One Priority INTRODUCTION: PARTNERSHIPS AND THE RELEVANCE FOR HEALTH CARE Patients, clients or individuals are now assigned the number one priority for health systems and healthcare human resources planning (Hartzband & Groopman, 2009; Kobberdahl & Porter 2009). A prerequisite for such importance is that the views of patients will need to be heard and considered by healthcare practitioners, administrators, and policymakers. Indeed within the healthcare sector, recent decades have witnessed several features that have had a direct impact on confirming that people/patients are valued as the main and essen- tial constituents of effective health systems. One aspect is that, with the move to patient-centered care delivery, patient engagement and patient education and the "expert patient" (where patients participate and are involved in their traditional cost-effective patient care (Jaspers et al., 2000). All these features present challenges to healthcare systems and to the traditional role of healthcare professionals. A second aspect is the significant growth in choices about where care is provided and by whom: the provision of non-traditional care by non-traditional practitioners (e.g. using a vari- ety of complementary therapies), and a range of community care services (Mavundla, Toth, & Mphelane, 2009; Zavradashvili et al., 2009) This has implications for health information, human resources and workforce planning, where informed patients provide inputs into decisions that are mutually agreed upon between them and their practitioners. A third challenge is the ag- ing population, with the corresponding increase in chronic diseases, long-term conditions, and various extents of a range of disabilities. In such situations, the patient is not a transient client but