May 12, 2010
Watching my 5 year old granddaughter play youth soccer was great fun. Such energy. Such excitement. Such effort. Everyone running toward the ball and doing their best to get in a good kick. Sometimes in their enthusiasm, they lost sight of which goal they should be aiming for and may even accidentally kick the ball into the other team’s space. It’s a bit like health care reform in the U.S.
Keep ‘health’ in health communication… this is one of my mantras. I remind myself of it when thinking about the value of my own health communication research and the value of work that I review. It reminds me to consider, “how will the work make a difference in the health of someone?” Will it, for example, help someone to make a decision about which treatment to choose, which food to eat, how important rest and fun can be for health? Will it help someone to talk with family members about health history or to disclose to family members, doctors, or others important information about health status? Will it enable others to provide emotional or tangible social support to keep to a health regimen? …and so on.
So when I listen to conversation about health care reform, I am struck by several trends. First, there is so much fear and anger in the discourse. My mom, for example, will be having hip replacement surgery this summer. She is in her late 70s and on Medicare. She is convinced that her doctor will be paid very little for her surgery because of health care reform. She is also fearful that if she doesn’t act now, she may not be able to even find a doctor who will do the surgery soon…because the doctors won’t be paid well and won’t accept patients on Medicare.
We know quite a bit about fear appeals in communication. And sure enough, what I hear suggests to me that for many, the talk about health care reform and the actual reform itself does not make the efficacy of the actions clear. How will this reform be an effective response in both promoting ‘health’ of citizens and in limiting the runaway expenses? How might each one of us feel more confident or gain the ability to make decisions about our own health based on the reform? Made to feel fearful, many become angry and direct it toward the source.
Second, there has been too little direct translation of how health care reform will benefit health. Health illiteracy and science illiteracy often provide a way to explain our lack of understanding about health issues. Health insurance illiteracy is a whole new ball game. Most of us have some experience with car insurance or home owner insurance or life insurance, so we fall back on those as a way to understand health care insurance and health care reform. We need some help here. We need to know what ideas from other insurance contexts apply and what ideas don’t apply.
In some cases, if you get ticketed for speeding or running a red light, it shows up as higher premiums on your car insurance for awhile. Generally, we think that buying life insurance when we are younger rather than older will be less expensive. And if we fail to prune the tall tree near our home and it falls onto our roof, causing us to file a claim–some increase in our premium isn’t too surprising. So how do these ideas relate to health care reform? And if they don’t, why not?
Third, the optimistic outcome relating to health care reform and changes for how our country communicates about health is that we all become wiser about how politics relates to health… So we participate in the political process with our vote in elections and our voice in debate… not just in overcrowded town hall meetings but in the online forums available to us through access to our representatives where we ask questions and persist until we have answers… often and not just when something ‘big’ seems to be in the wind.
In short, we need to keep our eye on the ball and the goal, and make sure that those who represent us do the same…
