How's your Health?

by cellomould 10 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  cellomould

  Considering the recent announcement that the jobless rate in the U.S. is the highest it's been in 7 years, here's a look into Los Angeles...

  Despite economic growth in the inner city, health care is lagging far behind. Perhaps this story does have a positive ending (South Central L.A. was a particular hot spot during the L.A. riots):

  The residents of the area that includes the South-Central neighborhood have the highest numbers of deaths due to diabetes, heart disease and lung cancer in the county. The poverty rate, also the highest in the county, is 37 percent. More than 17 percent of mothers give birth with no prenatal care, 25 percent of adults have no regular source of medical care and 47.4 percent of adults and nearly 28 percent of children have no health insurance.

  Dr. Jonathan Fielding, the county's director of public health who helped design the collaboration effort, said the approach had fundamentally shifted the department's focus toward preventive medicine and away from just treating illnesses.

  But Dr. Fielding said the approach was being undermined by budget problems. The Health Department is expected to have a $344 million budget gap in the 2004 fiscal year and a $688 million one in the following year.

  This is already forcing cutbacks. Dr. Erica Watson, a health officer, explained that, until recently, she had been in charge of community health services in a district just south of the South-Central one. But Dr. Watson was recently given responsibility over an adjacent district as well with no increase in staff or budget.

  The South-Central district recently drew up a list of health priorities, and the top four were preventing teenage pregnancy, creating better access to health care, providing prenatal care and creating more opportunities for children to exercise.

  "Not one of the four was disease-oriented," said Dr. Belinda Towns, the district's health officer. "They all get at root causes of disease. They may take a long time to provide results, but they have a better chance of long-range success."

  Ms. Jones of Healthy African-American Families added, "For so long we just waited for everything to fall apart then we did something in crisis mode. Now, we're talking about prevention. It's a different paradigm. Our community has been researched to death without much actually happening. We want to do something now."

  Los Angeles Inner City Beset by Chronic Health Problems

  May 3, 2002

  By JAMES STERNGOLD

  http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/03/national/03HEAL.html?ex=1021468683&ei=1&en=c0ec80839fd0c8d0

  cellomould

  "Without judgement, perception would increase a million times" Death, Without Judgement
• 

  Prisca

  One of my biggest gripes with governements today is the diminishing amount of attention and budget dollars directed towards health care. This is an isue not just in America, but here in Australia and no doubt in too many other countries.

  Affordable health care should be a right, not a privilege. Yet the waiting lists for operations are getting longer, people are getting sicker, if not dying, whilst they wait for proper health care. The hospitals are under-staffed, and over-filled with patients. Drs and nurses are working double shifts (who'd want to be operated on by someone who hasn't slept for the past 24hrs?).
• 

  cellomould

  Hey Prisca,

  I hear you. We'd have a lot fewer people IN the hospitals if we had a strong preventive health care system.

  cellomould

  "Without judgement, perception would increase a million times" Death, Without Judgement
• 

  Scully

  cello:

  We'd have a lot fewer people IN the hospitals if we had a strong preventive health care system.

  The trend in Canada, and likely in many other places, is to use the "ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" ideology for several reasons:

  1) as "baby boomers" age, hospitals are going to have to cope with increasing numbers of them becoming ill and requiring hospitalization, which will limit space available for others

  2) having healthy, aware young folks will diminish the burden on the health care system that is desperately trying to service aging "boomers"

  3) there aren't the same numbers of young people interested in entering the health care professions as there was in the past, leaving fewer doctors and nurses to care for more and sicker patients than ever before.

  Being a doctor, nurse, x-ray technician, lab technologist, physiotherapist, respiratory technologist, etc and working in a hospital inevitably means that people in these fields will have to give up "having a life" by working certain nights and weekends in order to accommodate staffing requirements of the institution. A lot of young people see this as a major deterrent from choosing these professions, and they find they can earn a similar wage in another field that doesn't cramp their lifestyle.

  So the burden of caring for folks in the hospital falls to the staff who are there, who face caring for more and more sick folks with less resources and more risk - for errors, injuries and liability - to themselves. I know on the shifts when I am looking after 10 patients (5 mothers + 5 babies), I feel rushed, stressed, and unable to give everyone the care and attention they deserve; as opposed to looking after the recommended 3 mother & baby couplets, which is considered the "safe maximum" for the kind of nursing I do. The problem is that we don't have enough nurses, and the nurses who otherwise might choose to be available to work extra shifts don't, simply because they've been overworked when they are there.

  There have been studies done in Canada which show that nurses have one of the highest rates of sick-time in the country. Factors that contribute to this are being exposed to more sick people more frequently, stress on the job (which suppresses a person's immunity), fatigue from doing shift work (which further suppresses immunity), and sleep deprivation (which is similar to but different from fatigue, but adds to stress levels and compounds immune suppression). Considering the trend of having fewer nurses to look after more and sicker patients, it's not likely that the high rate of sick-time for nurses is going to improve any time soon.

  That's another reason why preventative health care is so important.

  Love, Scully

  
  
• 

  cellomould

  Hi Scully...
  ...thanks for the reply

  We should discuss this stuff sometime, as you bring out some valid points. I would be very interested in seeing positive changes.

  After all, many employers have seen the economic benefits of keeping their employees healthy (i.e. subsidized gym memberships, or even a gym on campus at work). Studies have shown that the employees are healthier, taking drastically fewer sick days.

  This shows that the corporation can look out for its interests and those of its employees. Health care providers should adopt such mutually beneficial policies.

  Is the problem really so crucial that there aren't enough people to fill the jobs? This seems to be compounded by the self-promoting attitude most young health care professionals have.

  Many compete for attention by working long hours. But one person can only do so much in a day.

  You are absolutely right that hospitals, etc. need to hire more staff. Steps also need to be taken to encourage cooperation among the staff, especially those in different departments.

  I personally think that innovations in the computing networks in hospitals will be crucial in bringing about these changes.

  What do you think?

  cellomould

  "You're crying 'why am I the victim?' when the culprit is YOU" Stevie Wonder
• 

  Stephanus

  What you guys are whinging about is not the failure of modern healthcare, but its overwhelming success. The reason health budgets are not stretching as far as they once did is that so many more conditions are treatable which weren't even 5 years ago. All procedures cost money; the healthcare dollar is not expanding as quickly as the ability to provide healthcare, the medical technology going forward at a rate of knots, so the result is lengthening hospital queues. I for one am happy that premmie babies don't automatically die these days and that oldies can simply get a new artificial lens inserted in their eyes when they suffer from cataracts,etc.
• 

  cellomould

  Interesting, Stephanus...
  ...still you point out a problem.

  Remember Malthusian economic projections?
  (The food supply would increase much slower than the population, he claimed.)

  Your comments remind me of Malthus for obvious reasons. If the poor can't get prenatal care while the rich can have their babies vision repaired in utero (ok, I am talking out of my behind there, but it's quite likely possible) there is a problem.

  Malthus suggested forcing the poor to produce less babies. This is being done in China as we speak.

  I of course would recommend a more proactive and caring approach.

  cellomould

  "You're crying 'why am I the victim?' when the culprit is YOU" Stevie Wonder
• 

  Stephanus

  Remember Malthusian economic projections?
  (The food supply would increase much slower than the population, he claimed.)

  Well, he was wrong; in his day there were 1bn people to feed, now there's 6bn, and they're getting better fed all the time. Since 1961 the population of 3bn has doubled to 6bn, and yet only the same amount of the earth's surface is under cultivation. In other words, we're getting more for less, and there's no sign of the biotech advances we're making to feed the growing population slowing down. Current population growth projections have the world's population peaking in about 2040 at about 8bn then going into decline; if we've been able to feed an extra 3bn in 40 years, then an extra 2bn in 40 years time should be no problem.

  Yes, Malthus was one son of a bitch - his solution to having lots of poor people around was to let them starve and his attitude was that his class would be better off without them! Fortunately he's been proven wrong time and time again; not long after his time someone used Malthus' methods of dividing known resources by number of people and calculated that coal would run out before 1850 - this was before the invention of steam locomotives and railways in the 1830s!

  The problem with this approach is that we people are not just stomachs, consuming resources, but we are creative and continually produce new resources and techniques for continuing the supply of old resources. We don't just eat, but we produce - we farm new land and produce new technologies for getting the most out of that land. I see babies as not more mouths to feed, but more brains to solve the problems of how to feed the growing population. My guess is that we'll find it working out that way inthe medical field. After all, not many people in the western world are denied life-saving medical treatment, and I doubt that will change significantly in the future. It may look like the poor are getting less by comparison with their rich neighbours, but the valid comparison is between poor and poor - how much better off are the poor now, medical treatment wise, than they were 10, 20, 30 years ago?
• 

  cellomould

  I like the way you are thinking, Stephanus...
  ...we'll have to chat again sometime.

  cellomould

  "You're crying 'why am I the victim?' when the culprit is YOU" Stevie Wonder
• 

  Stephanus

  I like the way you are thinking, Stephanus...

  I didn't always think this way - I was brought up in an environmentalist family where I had no expectation of growing up to adulthood; either there'd be a nuclear war or environmental disaster or famine wiping out the world's population. Then I joined a religion that at its fringes was apocalyptic - "hold no hope in tomorrow, its all going to burn". Again, the talk was all gloom and doom and pessimism. Its taken some years to unlearn 30 years of negativity being rammed down my throat, but I keep trying, and become more upbeat about the future as I look at real data and real trends.