If we can create value in “the 80%” we’re effectively creating health, I was thinking. And how we see that value might be partly based on reduced demand for health care and partly based on wider social benefits made possible through better health. As a result, more and more of my time has been focussed on understanding the latter. Does better health mean better school grades for kids, for instance? And if so, what does that mean for their job prospects, their earning potential and their wider contributions to society?
The enormity of what he said didn’t really become apparent to me until I got an email from his fellow Explorer, Leigh Carroll. We were reflecting on how so many organisations are increasingly saying they want to focus on health not health care. Perhaps, I have been wondering, Wellthcare isn’t needed because other, bigger organisations are beginning to make the switch. But Leigh asked whether these organisations were really geared towards enabling health to grow from communities, based on what people in the communities actually want.
Leigh’s email made me reflect on Scott’s puzzlement and this morning I realised that my thinking has drifted away from ourManifesto. Creating health is not an end in itself it’s a means to something else. It’s not for us to decide what that something else is. People and communities will decide that – and their choices will be as unique and context-specific as they are. As we say in the Manifesto:
“Health is a means to an end, a vital tool to get to where we want to go, to achieve. Creating health, including the contribution of health care, has to serve our ends, our wants.”
For me, there are three lessons in all this. First, it’s incredibly hard to think anew, even when you’ve specifically challenged yourself to do so as I am doing through Wellthcare. As my friend, Ronna, said over email, “It is a slog, always, when one is trying something new. No one wants to be bothered having to think about something new…it is just the human condition.” Second, it’s incredibly important to have friends and advisors to keep you focussed. Scott, Leigh, and Ronna were being incredible in ways that I doubt they truly understood. And third, although I worried that it might be “self-inflating and vulgar” to have a Manifesto it’s proven an important tool to re-align my thinking – and rediscover my mojo.
If we’re really going to move from health care to creating health we have to value it based on what people want. Anything else is either lazy or a presumed superiority. I apologise for falling into that trap.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.