ne of the most eye-opening transformations that happened during COVID-19 was the increased role of health ownership. Before the pandemic, most people didn’t put the same stock in the care we give ourselves at home to prevent and treat illness. But the pandemic empowered people. The extreme circumstances have shown that people can take more control over their personal health. But they need to be given the right information and access to do this properly.
Helping people understand how they can prevent disease and proactively take care of themselves is one of the key ways we can rebuild health systems. The Center for Workforce Health and Performance in the U.S. believes that if people took care of more of their healthcare needs at home, this could result in $45 billion saved from unneeded doctors’ visits, among other costs. It would also result in an additional 130 million more days worked, which also means more money in someone’s pocket. Other countries have similar statistics.
Embed Self-Care into Public Policy
In conjunction with the World Health Organization, The Global Self-Care Federation* just launched the Self-Care Readiness Index to help countries better understand and create actionable plans against the four key enablers of self-care: stakeholder support and adoption, consumer and patient empowerment, health policy, and the regulatory environment. In assessing personal health practices and policies across 10 countries, several key themes emerged. First, self-care legislation is common, but disjointed. Numerous government strategies, plans, and programs touch on self-care, but few call it by name or paint a coherent policy vision.
Policies should look at new approaches to behavior change when they are determining future investments in health promotion, prevention, and self-care initiatives. We need to develop a “whole government” approach to self-care. Think multiple arms of government working together to both educate and embed habits—similar to what we saw when it came to hygiene, social distancing, and vaccination through COVID-19, but a sustained effort. Governments don’t need to work alone on this. The collective action developed through multi-stakeholder partnerships—bringing together the private and public sector—can create an even bigger impact.
Empower People with Information
The second key theme within the Self-Care Readiness Index is that individual empowerment hinges on continued efforts to boost health literacy, having credible, consistent sources of information that’s aligned with healthcare providers. Education is an often-overlooked aspect of healthcare, but it is critical. Consider the concerted effort behind the COVID-19 hand-washing best practices. The efforts were orchestrated, focused and made simple for people to implement—so they did. There’s lots of information available, but it is not always accurate or beneficial. This needs to change. In order for people to feel empowered, they need to be confident in their ability to take the right actions.
These programs don’t need to be complicated, but they do need to be targeted to ensure they are reaching people where they are and how they are most receptive to information.
Rethink Where Health Happens
One of the ways we can help people take better care of themselves is to rethink where health happens. We’re seeing this happen more and more but we need to continue to think of healthcare outside of clinics, doctors’ offices, and hospitals. It needs to happen in homes, pharmacies, grocery stores, and online—where patients actually are in their daily lives.
There’s still value in traditional healthcare settings, but in many communities, especially underserved ones, people have more access to the local store than a traditional healthcare provider. Services facilitated by a pharmacist or in-store healthcare provider can often be more affordable and offer 360 solutions—people can get healthcare provider-endorsed recommendations for how to take care of themselves, get prescriptions, and shop for over-the-counter solutions all in one place. In order for this to be successful, policies also need to change to enable access to medical records and the ability to make referrals.
There’s also opportunity for the expansion of digital health. The pandemic certainly encouraged telehealth, but in order to help create health ownership, this should be expanded to other health services. We’ve already started to see a patient’s home becoming the primary site for medical services. We’ll see this centered on at-home medical devices. For example, diabetes is a chronic condition that currently can be monitored with the help of digital remote-monitoring tools like glucose monitors and activity trackers. A patient can sync their devices to track progress, check their health data in real time, send and receive messages from a nurse, and share progress with their doctor. This helps address long periods of ongoing care and allows people to take control of their health.
It’s Up to Us
In order to rebuild health systems, people need to be empowered to take care of their personal health. It requires the leadership of multiple stakeholders collaborating to do it well, but if we can arm communities with the tools to take health ownership, we can make a huge impact. Not only can we rebuild health systems, but at the end of the day, this approach will help all people lead better lives because they are healthy enough to enjoy them.
*Disclosure: Bayer is a member of the Global Self-Care Federation and helped develop the Self-Care Readiness Index.
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Own Your Health: How People Like You and Me Can Help Rebuild Health Systems
Photo by Patrick Hendry via Unsplash.
October 10, 2021
One positive outcome of the pandemic has been increased interest in individuals taking a proactive role in health ownership and self-care. Institutions should help people understand how better to proactively take care of themselves as we emerge from the pandemic, writes Bayer's Daniella Foster.
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ne of the most eye-opening transformations that happened during COVID-19 was the increased role of health ownership. Before the pandemic, most people didn’t put the same stock in the care we give ourselves at home to prevent and treat illness. But the pandemic empowered people. The extreme circumstances have shown that people can take more control over their personal health. But they need to be given the right information and access to do this properly.
Helping people understand how they can prevent disease and proactively take care of themselves is one of the key ways we can rebuild health systems. The Center for Workforce Health and Performance in the U.S. believes that if people took care of more of their healthcare needs at home, this could result in $45 billion saved from unneeded doctors’ visits, among other costs. It would also result in an additional 130 million more days worked, which also means more money in someone’s pocket. Other countries have similar statistics.
Embed Self-Care into Public Policy
In conjunction with the World Health Organization, The Global Self-Care Federation* just launched the Self-Care Readiness Index to help countries better understand and create actionable plans against the four key enablers of self-care: stakeholder support and adoption, consumer and patient empowerment, health policy, and the regulatory environment. In assessing personal health practices and policies across 10 countries, several key themes emerged. First, self-care legislation is common, but disjointed. Numerous government strategies, plans, and programs touch on self-care, but few call it by name or paint a coherent policy vision.
Policies should look at new approaches to behavior change when they are determining future investments in health promotion, prevention, and self-care initiatives. We need to develop a “whole government” approach to self-care. Think multiple arms of government working together to both educate and embed habits—similar to what we saw when it came to hygiene, social distancing, and vaccination through COVID-19, but a sustained effort. Governments don’t need to work alone on this. The collective action developed through multi-stakeholder partnerships—bringing together the private and public sector—can create an even bigger impact.
Empower People with Information
The second key theme within the Self-Care Readiness Index is that individual empowerment hinges on continued efforts to boost health literacy, having credible, consistent sources of information that’s aligned with healthcare providers. Education is an often-overlooked aspect of healthcare, but it is critical. Consider the concerted effort behind the COVID-19 hand-washing best practices. The efforts were orchestrated, focused and made simple for people to implement—so they did. There’s lots of information available, but it is not always accurate or beneficial. This needs to change. In order for people to feel empowered, they need to be confident in their ability to take the right actions.
These programs don’t need to be complicated, but they do need to be targeted to ensure they are reaching people where they are and how they are most receptive to information.
Rethink Where Health Happens
One of the ways we can help people take better care of themselves is to rethink where health happens. We’re seeing this happen more and more but we need to continue to think of healthcare outside of clinics, doctors’ offices, and hospitals. It needs to happen in homes, pharmacies, grocery stores, and online—where patients actually are in their daily lives.
There’s still value in traditional healthcare settings, but in many communities, especially underserved ones, people have more access to the local store than a traditional healthcare provider. Services facilitated by a pharmacist or in-store healthcare provider can often be more affordable and offer 360 solutions—people can get healthcare provider-endorsed recommendations for how to take care of themselves, get prescriptions, and shop for over-the-counter solutions all in one place. In order for this to be successful, policies also need to change to enable access to medical records and the ability to make referrals.
There’s also opportunity for the expansion of digital health. The pandemic certainly encouraged telehealth, but in order to help create health ownership, this should be expanded to other health services. We’ve already started to see a patient’s home becoming the primary site for medical services. We’ll see this centered on at-home medical devices. For example, diabetes is a chronic condition that currently can be monitored with the help of digital remote-monitoring tools like glucose monitors and activity trackers. A patient can sync their devices to track progress, check their health data in real time, send and receive messages from a nurse, and share progress with their doctor. This helps address long periods of ongoing care and allows people to take control of their health.
It’s Up to Us
In order to rebuild health systems, people need to be empowered to take care of their personal health. It requires the leadership of multiple stakeholders collaborating to do it well, but if we can arm communities with the tools to take health ownership, we can make a huge impact. Not only can we rebuild health systems, but at the end of the day, this approach will help all people lead better lives because they are healthy enough to enjoy them.
*Disclosure: Bayer is a member of the Global Self-Care Federation and helped develop the Self-Care Readiness Index.
