In presentations I have made in the past year or two I have had to confess to a relative inexperience and unfamiliarity with the social factors that can adversely affect a population’s health and well-being.
My inexperience is the result of having spent nearly my entire medical and leadership career practicing in the military medical system. Until recently my patients, their parents and families were all active duty or retired military. As a group they had education, jobs, housing and access to healthcare. We know that only about 20% of what makes our patients well or not is a result of health care (despite our inclination to think that those of us in health care are located at the center of the wellness universe). For the remaining eighty percent of what influences health and well-being, our military patients had the benefit of the positive effect of education, jobs and housing. Continue reading
Henry V 4.3 