Promoting Healthy Behavior: How Much Freedom? Who’s Responsibility?
By:
NWHF Staff
| Posted on: May 15th, 2008
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Categories:
Policies & Laws •
Public Health
Chances are you’re responsible when it comes to your own health. You probably follow a pretty good diet and exercise plan, and at least you try to get enough sleep. You probably don’t smoke or drink too much. You even have somewhat regular checkups at the doctor.
If this is all true, chances are you live in a certain neighborhood. You also most likely have more than a high school education.
The fact is, we can tell people to make healthy choices, but until we come together to make societal changes that make us all healthier, we’re not going to make much difference in improving the health of everyone.
Do you agree with all this?
If you do, what needs to be done right now?
Do you disagree?
Maybe you find yourself more in line with former U.S. Senator Bill Frist, who wrote in 2005 that people “must stop smoking, eat right, exercise, take their medication, and monitor their blood sugar, based on their own volition and usually outside of the clinical setting. Public policies must encourage patients to embrace personal responsibility…Many argue that quality chasms and health disparities cannot be fixed by fostering competition…But all of our immediate health care system problems—rising costs, questionable quality, patient safety, rising numbers of uninsured people, and, yes, health disparities—are interrelated and can be improved by empowering patients and providers.”
Could it be, as Daniel Callahan suggested in 2006, that our society is fundamentally ambivalent about community health promotion and disease prevention, and that the source of that ambivalence is the powerful libertarian strain that has historically run through our society? In other words, many of us want good health, but we don’t the government to have anything to do with it.
What do you think? Can we have our freedom and our good health too?
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