Tim Adebayo

Health communities need extra care: clear rules on medical advice, quick moderation, and private spaces where people can talk openly. Working on all three for our patient network.

Three things our patient community taught me this year: people trust peers more than pamphlets, privacy settings matter enormously, and a kind reply can change someone's week.

Trying a new format: a monthly Q&A where members can ask a clinician general health questions (no diagnoses). The first session is next Tuesday.

I'm keen to see what happens when we open our caregivers' space to family members too. Starting a pilot this month.

Lots of new faces this week, so a quick re-introduction: I'm Tim, a family physician in Atlanta, building an online support network for people with chronic conditions and the people who care for them.

A reminder for everyone in the wellness spaces: take breaks from screens, including this one. The community will still be here when you get back.

Our caregiver support group passed 300 members this month. Thank you to the volunteer moderators who make it a safe place to talk.

Looking for members who'd like to help translate our community guidelines into other languages. Accessibility matters.

Shout-out to everyone who posted publicly for the first time this week after months of quietly reading. It takes courage. We're glad you're here, and there's no wrong way to start.

One reason we chose UNA for our health network: our members' data stays on our own servers, under our own policies. For a patient community, that's not optional.

Why we built our patient network on UNA

Calling any platform "the best" is an invitation to argue. If you mainly publish articles, WordPress is stronger. If you never want to touch a server, a fully hosted community product is easier. But when the community itself is the product, not a website with comments bolted on, UNA makes an unusually strong case. A few things that mattered for us:

• It's built around members, not pages. Profiles, groups, spaces, events, messages, notifications and moderation share one system, so a member has one identity and one set of privacy rules wherever they are on the network.
• It grows with you. We started with profiles and two private spaces. Since then we've added events and a resource library without migrating anywhere. Studio handles most of the configuration, and a developer can go further with custom modules or the API.
• The permissions are granular. Membership levels and per-space privacy let us keep some groups invite-only and others open to anyone searching for help at two in the morning.

Ownership is the strategic part. The code is open source and runs on our own servers. For a patient community that isn't a nice extra. Our members' conversations, and the policies that govern them, stay with us rather than with a vendor whose priorities could change next year.

It isn't effortless. Someone has to keep the server patched and the backups tested, and I lean on more technical volunteers for that. But I'd rather carry that work than tell a caregiver their support group has moved because a pricing page changed.

A few photos from our community health fair: blood pressure checks, a nutrition workshop, and a surprisingly competitive step challenge.