As Americans adjust to a new healthcare system, some providers are beginning to dig deeper into the social conditions that may lead a patient to seek medical treatment in the first place. They’re finding that sometimes, a prescribed antibiotic is simply not the answer.
That’s the thinking at Health Leads, a Boston-based organization that partners with healthcare institutions to provide non-medical assistance for vulnerable patients.
Why this new method of treatment? Too often, doctors end up prescribing medication, but instead of getting better, the patient actually worsens as he or she continues to live in poor conditions. The cyclical nature of this process leads to patients returning to seek more treatment, which then becomes a costly venture for hospitals. (For example, instead of giving medication to someone living in a car, what that patient may really need is access to proper housing or heat instead.) But what if doctors “prescribed” healthy food, housing or other basic needs?
MORE: The Checklist That Can Reform Healthcare
At Health Leads’s institutions, after seeing a doctor, patients are directed to meet with volunteer “advocates,” which typically are college students. These volunteers work with these patients to get them better access to public benefits and community resources. Their goal, according to the Stanford Social Innovation Review, is to transform the way institutions deliver health care by addressing how social factors can shape healthy living.
But the program, which connects 1,000 student volunteers with 14,000 patients and families, is keeping its focus small. Rather than expanding on a large scale, the project is partnering with just a few institutions — such as academic medical centers and for-profit hospitals — to create models for other institutions to emulate. Health Leads is also focusing on collecting data from its partnerships to further support transformation across the health care industry.
“Going small may not be glamorous,” Health Leads’s Rebecca Onie, Sarah Di Troia and Sonia Sarkar write. “But if we can couple a powerful on-the-ground demonstration with pathways to change the sector, we will have the opportunity at last to transform health care for patients, physicians, and us all.”
While addressing social conditions like public safety, economic inequality, and food security is nothing new, it’s important to see organizations like Health Leads make the connections between healthy living and health care.
Tag: public health
Can Comic Books Help Spread Public Safety Messages?
It’s a paradox of public safely: often those most in need of learning about health and safety risks and solutions are the most difficult to reach. They may not even be able to read.
The answer may be pictures — they’re worth 1,000 words, after all. Specifically, comic books, with easily understood drawings and messages that appeal across generations.
Enter Miguel Lopez and his wife, Helen Anaya, of Chandler, Ariz. Lopez used to work for a bank, and he remembered counterparts in Mexico using comic books to teach customers about saving and investing. The comics reached those who couldn’t read well.
Lopez and Anaya thought, why not bring this idea to the U.S.?
And so a genre that typically entertains kids and collectors may now reach a whole new audience — with some of the most important lessons of their lives.
The couple launched Storynamics in 2006, and they’ve hooked up with governments, schools, and other organizations to produce comic books about serious topics: hand washing, the West Nile Virus, water safety, diabetes, even how to deal with bat bites. The comics are printed in Spanish and English, with pictures to help reach those who struggle to read.
“One of the… significant challenges we are trying to address with the stories is literacy about health issues,” Lopez told Aaron Rop of AZCentral. “When you are not comfortable reading, you miss out on many things and many of those things are important to your health.”
Storynamics has produced and distributed over 240,000 comic books in 16 states. The comic book approach appeals to many local governments, because they can provide them to families via their children. Their appeal to kids is universal.
Among the project’s smart moves: the kids get the books in school, then bring them home and beg their parents to read. Few parents can resist their kid coming home excited about a gift from school, begging for Mom or Dad to tell a story.
“They go to their parents and they say, ‘Dad can you read this for me? Look at what they gave me at school’,” Lopez told Rop.
With the help of Storynamics comic books, soon it could be the kids helping their parents to eat right, exercise and get to bed early.
MORE: This Special Comic Book Makes Autistic Kids Feel Like Superheroes
Critical Care Nurse Turns Frustration Into Innovation for Pennsylvanians
Meet Alice Yoder. Her early work as a critical-care nurse came with high levels of frustration, as she saw too many patients suffering problems like heart attacks because of behavioral problems that might have been easy to correct. She didn’t let frustration turn her away from the idea of improving community health, though. Instead, she took on the role she describes as “convener and collaborator,” and has served as community health director at Lancaster General Hospital for more than two decades. In that time, she has overcome budget challenges and multiple changes in healthcare infrastructure to successfully make dramatic changes in the area’s health and lifestyle. She implemented new programs, like the hospital’s Wellness Center, and originated the area’s healthy-lifestyle organization, Lighten Up Lancaster County.