 | Looking Upstream – The General Plenary Session |
Hello and welcome to The Cancer Lens Blog. Our first post covers the general plenary session that just wrapped up a few minutes ago. If we walked away from the session with anything, it would be this simple yet profound short story Dr. Adewale Troutman, director of Louisville Metro Public Health and Wellness, presented to a packed auditorium. Dr. Troutman told us a story of two men fishing. While fishing, they spot a baby coming down the river. Shortly after the first baby comes a second baby. One of the men immediately jumps in to the rescue, but the other man turns around and starts running upstream. “What are you doing? I need you to help me in case there are more babies coming down the river!” The other man responds, saying “I need to go up there and see who’s throwing these babies into the river!”
How does this apply to achieving health equity? Well, we already know the facts – minorities and poor people are more likely to die from preventable (keyword – preventable) diseases. Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, shared one of many disturbing statistics – a study in 2000 showed that blacks were 4 times more likely to get definitive treatments 60 days (that’s three months) after initial consultation! We also already know that minorities and the poor are much less likely to consume the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables per day (5-9 servings), but if you look in the neighborhoods in which they reside, there are many fast food restaurants in sight.
So how do we achieve health equity for minorities and the poor? Not to make the answer seem so simple, but we need to run upstream and find solutions there too. We need to encourage African American women to NOT skip their yearly mammograms, especially now that we know that death rates from breast cancer in African American women are significantly higher than other groups. We need to advocate for policies that place fruits and vegetables within reach (both spatially and economically), especially now that we know there is a link between a healthy diet and reduced cancer risk. And most importantly, as the health care reform debate carries on, we need to ensure that everyone, including minorities and the poor, have access to quality health care, especially now that we know that minorities and the poor are less likely to receive recommended care.
Dr. Carolyn Barley Britton, president of the National Medical Association, presented findings from The Consensus Report of the National Medical Association (available at www.nmanet.org) to further enforce all that is stated above. She also stressed the importance of encouraging minority students to step into the world of medicine.
While cure is important, prevention is also key. We know that many diseases are preventable, and prevention solutions require going upstream. Albert Einstein defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Insanity, in the case of achieving health equity, would be to use up all our energy and resources jumping into the river to save those babies.
