When it comes to health care policy, we keep failing to take seriously the value of human relationships. The cost of this oversight is staggering.
Interpretation
Human relationships play a crucial role in health care, and neglecting this value can have dire consequences.
In this quote, Robert J. Waldinger emphasizes the importance of human relationships in health care policy. He suggests that the failure to recognize and incorporate the value of these relationships not only impoverishes the system but also leads to significant costs, impacting both individual and societal health outcomes.
In practice
In a discussion on health care reform, one might invoke this quote to highlight the need for stronger community ties.
Being human means there's a wall-builder in each of us. Our minds naturally divide the world into me and not-me, us and them. For thousands of years, our sages have taught that we're all one, yet we still divide wherever we look.
It's the quality of your relationships that matters.
The good life is built with good relationships.
It's not just the number of friends you have, and it's not whether or not you're in a committed relationship. It's the quality of your close relationships that matters.
It turns out that people who are more socially connected to family, to friends, to community, are happier, they're physically healthier, and they live longer than people who are less well connected.
People who are more isolated than they want to be from others find that they are less happy, their health declines earlier in midlife, their brain functioning declines sooner, and they live shorter lives than people who are not lonely.
The awareness that health is dependent upon habits that we control makes us the first generation in history that to a large extent determines its own destiny.
If you want to know the value of vaccines, just spend some time in a clinic in Africa. The faces of the mothers and fathers say it all: vaccines prevent illness and save lives.
'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'
If you take care of your body, it'll take care of you.
We should resolve now that the health of this nation is a national concern; that financial barriers in the way of attaining health shall be removed; that the health of all it's citizens deserves the help of all the nation.
The health care industry can play a great role in this by being aware of the fact that these children form perhaps the most neglected group of people in the country, largely because it is hard to find them.
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