Generations.
If you think about it, this represents a really long time.
In general, a generation covers a period of about 30 years, during which new family members are born, grow up and, as adults, have children of their own.
If we consider this further, these newborns in Generation 1.0, are raised a certain way by their parents, are influenced and molded over their adult life by other people and experiences, and then are destined to pass on their new collective life view to their children. In the same way, these children in Generation 2.0 receive all the vital characteristics from their parents’ evolved world, advance their own adult perspectives with every personal relationship and experience, and pass on this new 2.0 life view to their own children. On and on it goes with every passing generation of time and additional branch on the family tree.
So, when we look at the state of health care in the United States and the deadly disparities that still exist for people of color, like me, indigenous people and poor communities, we have to look at what is being passed down through the generations. This means both what the health care community is passing down to each other about the care we’ll receive and what we are passing around to our contemporaries and down to our children about the care we deserve.
To me, this is where the greatest disparity lies and where we should set our sights for attack. We need to eliminate the gap between the care we receive and the care we deserve. This can be accomplished by creating healthy balance between expectations and reality on several fronts:
between our expectations of care and the actual outcomes
between our understanding of quality healthcare and desired outcomes
between healthcare provision and our health needs
between healthcare providers and the equity of quality care for all people and communities
between access to care and our community dynamics and social determinants of health between healthcare advances and representative research
Without balance, we will continue to see more generations of people like us and communities like ours suffer needlessly, greatly, repeatedly, continuously, harshly and inhumanely.
This is the fuel for our passion at The Well to help people and communities in need. We will continue to push our 3-pronged focus on health advocacy, representative research and community development. There is a critical truth underlying each of these initiatives:
Knowledge is power.
As we as a people and community learn about the best quality care available to anyone, we can, then, demand and promote that same quality of care for everyone.
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