Sometimes we need to revisit ideas about how society is best organized to achieve goals that seem to be distant in our current situation. Inequity and inefficiency in delivery of health services may be addressed by a team approach. Social structures that facilitate friendships across social classes may increase high school completion and increase income for those born poorer.
Ali Amad, writing for Macleans magazine, in a discussion with Dr. Andrew Boozary dissects proposed solutions like privatization and prescribes a new approach to delivering health care across Canada.
Traditionally, our health care system is structured around hospitals and doctors working on their own in an urban neighbourhood or rural community. To modernize health care delivery, we must shift from this archaic and rigid structure to a more dynamic team-based approach. Instead of forcing patients to deal with our siloed health care system, which splits services into different locations or departments, each with their own procedures and red tape, teams of primary care physicians, nurses, specialists and social workers could work together in one setting or travel together as mobile units to underserved communities. Health care can then be collaboratively delivered in a much more time- and cost-efficient approach that benefits providers and patients.
An integral part of this team-based approach is an investment in more community health workers. Typically trained and employed by community health centres, community health workers tend to be locals with shared lived experiences who can act as guides and advocates for their community members. For my immigrant single-mom patient, a community health worker who speaks the same language would be an ally who can help enrol her with a family doctor and ease some of her daily life burdens. (Amad, 2022)
An article in the Economist explores how friendships across classes are important aids to social mobility for young Americans.
One measure seemed especially important. What the researchers called “economic connectedness”—the extent of friendships across social classes—was strongly associated with increased rates of high-school completion, reduced rates of teenage pregnancy and increased income for those born poorer. Moving from a place where friendships across social strata are relatively uncommon (a one-in-four chance of a friendship between someone in the bottom half of the class distribution and someone in the top) to one where it was relatively standard (a one-in-two chance) translated into an 8.2 percentile increase in future earnings, the researchers found. (A New Study Shows How Much Social Capital Matters, 2022)
My neighbourhood, growing up, included the poorest and some high income families who attended the same schools, played the same sports, and were known to all in our coal mining town. The idea of building teams to assist people of all social classes is easier when friendship is established between community members.
References
Amad, A. (2022, August 15). How to fix our broken health care system. Macleans.ca. Retrieved August 17, 2022, from https://www.macleans.ca/society/how-to-fix-our-broken-healthcare-system/
A new study shows how much social capital matters. (2022, August 1). The Economist. Retrieved August 17, 2022, from https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/08/01/a-new-study-shows-how-much-social-capital-matters
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