SELLING SICKNESS AND RIGHT CARE
Kim and I (LT) attended the 2nd Lown Conference “From Avoidable Care to Right Care” (opens in a new tab) in Boston last week.
This event marked the end of a high water mark year for multidisciplinary conferences on overdiagnosis and disease-mongering that brought together physicians, consumer activists, non-physician professionals, payors, and carers. Clearly, a new social health movement is building.
As Kim wrote here on May 20, meetings within the consumer activist world occur all the time (cf. the recent 20th anniversary (opens in a new tab) of the influential Consumers Union Safe Patient Project (opens in a new tab)), but what we need are more opportunities for partnerships among the many stakeholders and constituencies.
The Lown conference afforded me many memorable experiences and new ideas, including:
- A chance to see the remarkable nonagenarian physician and peace activist, Bernard Lown, author of The Lost Art of Healing (READ THIS FASCINATING BOOK!)
- A Town Hall simulation that demonstrated in an hour how 30 citizens with widely diverging viewpoints can engage in meaningful dialog about health care overuse
- Novel values-driven medical education projects aimed at global awareness and humanism
- International projects challenging overuse in diverse cultural settings
- How and why to continue the campaign for single payer health insurance
- Cultural tropes to challenge - more is better, newer is better, health is the domain of medicine
- Many ways to challenge market-based healthcare in theory, practice, education, and collaboration
- The devastating impact of escalating health insurance costs on the budget of small towns such as China, Maine
The conference organizers have a Declaration of Principles (opens in a new tab) you can sign online which reiterates the moral tone of the conference - health care is a human right. It is a strong way to end a groundbreaking year but we also need to continue to stress the need to cultivate relationships based on mutual respect for diverse sources of knowledge. More voices, more perspectives.