The newly released Quality of Care Framework aims to address the quality issue, in a way that looks across self care intervention (not in intervention/product silos). It’s new and needs to be used and tested to ensure it’s useful! So I urge others to apply it, and share what they think!
The resources that the Self-Care Forum are producing (especially the Factsheets) are an excellent starting point to help suport people to self-care for common and everyday conditions
You’re right there is a distinction - hopefully more self-care for minor issues frees up Doctors to focus on the more serious conditions
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There is a huge need to re-educate the public about health services in HIC. That’s been attempted for decades but there is still the duality of it being your “right” and the difficulty for the general population to understand and react around health issues which relies on health professionals for all needs to be catered
There is a very large and growing movement in the business world committed to investing in early childhood, not as a matter of charitable concern, but rather as what I think is a direct result of the language and evidence base around early brain and child development being translated into ROI and meaningful business interests and outcomes. Having spent the last 5+ years focused on bringing these (otherwise distant) sectors together around shared mission, I’ve focused on what has been done/translated to get business involved. You can check out ReadyNation (in the US - high profile business leaders advocating for investment in early childhood) for the language/translation (and I also gave a TED talk attempting to bring the business and early childhood sectors together)
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Also - the underpinnings of multilateral collaboration and country participation on the world stage are changing. Countries turn inward when faced with a major crisis to focus on their own people – look at the global race to develop a Covid vaccine. Unless there are strong multilateral institutions like the WHO, there is the fear that global security will be weakened as people become more insular and intolerant of the global collective. This is unlikely to change soon, though the extent to which young people can be inspired to focus on self-care from an early age may help to create a new generation that also believes and focuses their efforts on strengthening the global collective for health.
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@ Bernard_Luksich you make a very good point. Self-care is not about pushing responsibility and cost for care to the individual, rather it’s about allowing people to maximise their potential of all levels of the health system, including the user. It is vital that we act with this in mind or else future generations will be left with ‘less healthcare’ rather than ‘better healthcare’! That is the opportunity and the threat; but the opportunity is a great one
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With COVID-19, instead of focusing on bringing patients back to the hospital/GP - why don’t we build on this momentum and promote/enable self-care.
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Agree! By caring for everyday health, people can improve their health and well-being today, as well as prevent and decrease the likelihood of disease in the future. In a study of 23,000 German adults, having healthy every day behaviors accounted for a 78% lower risk of chronic disease (diabetes, myocardial infarction, stroke, and cancer).
Great ideas. I’m sure this will inform the upcoming costing workstream of the Self Care Trailblazer Group’s Evidence and Learning Working Group! https://www.psi.org/project/self-care/evidence-and-learning-working-group/
Goodness so many important points made here. I would like to therefore invite you all to share the one key take away you want everyone to remember?
@Amira - agreed! Focus on proactive/preventive rather than reactive/treatment !
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Very helpful. Thanks!
The current model of healthcare is not sustainable. Healthcare systems currently function with a sick care model. We wait for people to become unwell and then deal with the crisis which is expensive. Around the world, every health care system is struggling with rising costs and uneven quality despite the hard work of well-intentioned, well-trained clinicians and this became more apparent during the Covid19 pandemic.
Healthcare fundamentally has to work on a new strategy.
The solution is to provide people with healthcare upfront, to promote wellness and self care to prevent a downstream crisis and emergency resulting in increased and unsustainable costs.
Baylon wants to help people lead longer, healthier lives and support them to take better care of their health. If a lot of that upfront healthcare delivered upfront can be delivered through means of self care we can prevent people becoming ill and seeking help only when needed. By managing minor health needs through self-care, it will help to ease the pressure on health systems. Babylon is enabling self care as the first step on the pyramid of care because our AI is making health care affordable and accessible - allowing people to digitally self- serve, essentially a clinician in your pocket with 27/7 on demand access to care - this allows little problems to not become big problems as barrier to access is eliminated.
This solution Babylon wants to champion globally, is to take responsibility for a person’s healthcare end-to-end, so we can afford to provide a higher quality of care and access early to reduce the incidence of emergency or complication later to save cost. We call this ‘We call this digital-first care’. This is known in the healthcare sector as Value Based Care. Our familiar Circle of Care was designed from the very start of Babylon to deliver every component of a value-based solution.The transformation to value-based health care is well under way and is the only way to make healthcare sustainable.
At its core is maximising value for patients: that is, achieving the best outcomes at the lowest cost. We must move away from a supply-driven health care system organised around what clinicians do and toward a patient-centered system organised around what patients need. We must shift the focus from the volume and profitability of services provided—physical appointments, hospitalisations, procedures, and tests—to the patient outcomes achieved. And we must replace today’s fragmented system, in which every local provider offers a full range of services, with a system in which services for particular medical conditions are concentrated in health-delivery organisations and in the right locations to deliver high-value care.
This is the true disruption of the existing model of sick care and we must all adopt this approach if we are to promote a border movement in support of self care and make healthcare sustainable.
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The broadly generalized shift from acute care (Health 1.0) first half of last century to chronic disease (Health 2.0) 2nd half of last century (which of course are both still relevant around the world today) to now Health 3.0 = wellness & prevention has been serving as a major disruptive force to the more “traditional” and “medical” view of healthcare. Agree with @BernieLuksich that the term “selfcare” doesn’t capture the concept nearly as well as wellness and prevention…about which we know 2 things very clearly: 1) doesn’t happen in the operating room, or even within the 4 walls of the “traditional”, “western” health care system and 2) wellness and prevention (and behavior change) is not only the most cost effective strategy, but the earlier you start, the better. I generally tell people I’m not just an “early childhood” focused pediatrician…I’m a “root cause” person.
The future of healthcare is linked to selfcare. It’s critical for accessibility and sustainable healthcare systems. Here’s my take on how heathcare needs to change post-pandemic:
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To wrap up, self-care has the potential to be a great equaliser between the HIC and LMIC, its benefits being reaped increasingly generation after generation and ensuring more children, no matter where they live, will not only survive but also thrive.
There are 8760 hours in one year, but we usually spend less than an hour a year with a healthcare professional. It’s crucial that we recognise the singular value of adopting health-seeking self-care behaviours in the remaining 8759 hours to promote vitality & ageing fit for 21st centruty living.
This is an incredibly important agenda, but there isn’t one simple thing that can be done to overcome the challenges. PAGB is calling for a national strategy for self care to provide leadership and a package of measures to support the necessary behaviour change.
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Really can’t thank all the panellists enough - there is a huge amount of rich information here and we really appreciate the time and thought you have all provided on this vital topic. We will be in touch with you all as the Business Fights Poverty Toolkit in partnership with Bayer progresses and I look forward to sharing it with you and your networks in the next couple of months.