Health is a Leadership Issue

Returning blogger Di Chapman, founder of Quotepourri.com writes on a topic top of many agendas, health care.  Start your weekend off right with a motivating article from Di:

“Who you are speaks so loudly, I can’t hear what you’re saying.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

I’m reading through Mac Anderson’s book Charging the Human Battery, nodding with approval at essay #37 about motivating himself through exercise: “I could never write a book on self-motivation without discussing the importance of regular exercise….Exercise is one of the best investments you can make to ensure a healthy body and a positive attitude.” Mac’s observation is substantiated by medical and scientific research day after day, year after year. Yet, in America, for at least half a century, this research has gone unheeded by the majority of our population. As a published health and fitness writer and speaker for nearly two decades, the topic of health, and how we can achieve it and care for it, is one of my passions. I have warily watched our American delusion that health “can be bought” with the right plastic surgery, or the right “magic” pill; and our misconception that we can “buy back” health that we squander by undergoing bypass surgery or stomach banding. Truthfully, I have wondered when our stubborn resistance to making healthy lifestyle choices would create the crisis in health care we see around us today.

I have believed for many years that health is a leadership issue, and I maintain that our culture of ill health in this country drives the “health care” debacle. It’s my belief that our leaders must seek to understand the origins of this cataclysmic event, and how it has been decades in the making. Leadership in this issue also requires the ability to move beyond our own biases while we look honestly at the health condition of most of America, and the business of health care in our country, fairly and squarely. The hysteria and vicious debate about health care is a two-sided maelstrom, and we have to be willing to see and hear each side.

It’s unfortunate that the health care “debate” leaves little to no room for logical discussion about the true meaning of “health” and why so many Americans are unable to view the word objectively. How did the meaning of a word that should be so full of positive connotation become a word that drives such a fury of hostility? The raging disaster I see around us totally dismisses the true notion of what “health care” is and always should be – and the reality surrounding the “state of health” in America.

Honestly, you would think that each of us would wish ourselves, our families, our friends, and our neighbors “good health,” and mean it. You’d think we would want to help everyone we know to be as healthy as possible. Health is a HUMAN issue. A lack of health and health care destroys the status of a culture, and the ability to sustain its standard of living. Throughout history, countries achieve stability by ensuring the health, education, and prosperity of their citizens. The hysteria surrounding the health care “issue” in America is doing a poor job of pointing out “the obvious” about the collective state of health in our country. There’s a megaton gorilla in the middle of our living rooms: in general, we Americans have taken very little interest in, and are lousy at, taking care of our health. It was only a matter of time until our resistance to healthier living created the social eruption we see today.

How We Got Here

Those of us over 50 can remember when our doctors smoked cigarettes while they gave us our physical checkups, and blew smoke in our faces as they prescribed treatment plans for our Mumps, Measles or Flu. In 1965, we witnessed our government slapping warning labels on packs of cigarettes, telling us that tobacco could be dangerous to our health. Equally as many years ago, I remember competing against my classmates for the President’s Council on Physical Fitness in Phys Ed, while clouds of cigarette smoke billowed out of the teachers’ lounge every time the door opened. I vividly remember when, in 1987, I became a certified fitness instructor, and the biggest challenge and discussion among members of the fitness industry was what we called “exercise motivation and adherence.” Statistically, only 15% of Americans engaged in ANY form of exercise, including taking a walk down the block and back. Fast forward to 2002, when the U.S. HHS reported that only 3 out of 10 Americans exercised regularly. Now, the government’s Healthy People 2010 reports that less than 50% of our population meets the minimum guideline of 20 minutes of vigorous activity three days per week.

At the same time, our consumption of alcohol created an additional 3.8 million alcoholics between 1992 and 2002; our food consumption has catapulted the number of fast food restaurants to 222,000 locations with revenues of $125 billion; our obesity rate is now 31% of our population, and 63% of Americans are clinically overweight, using the CDC’s Body Mass Index measurement standard. FastCompany.com reported in August that “The average American eats 16 pounds of French fries, 23 pounds of pizza, and 26 pounds of candy every year.” Childhood obesity in the U.S. has more than tripled in the past 20 years. The CDC reported in 2000 that adult onset diabetes rose 33% between 1990 and 1998 in every category, including men and women of all races and ethnic groups, with Type 2 diabetes accounting for over 90% of the cases. Our tanning booth and sun exposure have produced an increase in melanoma from 1 in 1500 Americans in 1960 to 1 in 70 Americans in 2000. Our adult cigarette consumption hovers at 20%, but 28% of American teens now smoke, on track to produce 6.4 million premature deaths from smoking-related disease.

The truth about health care in America is that we are, as a population, so unhealthy, we have accepted ill health as a norm, and our rampant proliferation of mostly-preventable health conditions has also created the second half of the health care debacle – the issue of “health care as big business.” As American lifestyle habits produced more and more ill health, our markets responded by creating businesses whose profits are derived from treating, or not treating, illness and injuries. Today, the dollars we spend on health “care” represent 1/6 of our economy, a whopping $7000 per citizen, per year. The “business” of health care has a HUGE amount of profit at stake on the supply side of the health care debate, fed by the equally huge amount of demand our bad habits create. The result has been an escalation of prices to a point where many of us are terrified that the cost of health care services are no longer affordable.

To top it off, for all of the dollars we pile into the health care industry, the World Health Organization ranks the quality of our medical outcomes at 37th in the world, behind France, Malta, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates. The March of Dimes reports that the USA ranks just above Latvia in newborn infant mortality rates. Twenty-six countries have better newborn health than the U.S., including Japan, Canada, France, Slovenia, Slovakia, and Poland, especially in light of the billions of dollars we spend in health care.

What We Can Do

It is easy to feel overwhelmed by these facts and statistics.  However, if we keep a few principles in mind, we can improve the state of health in America.  First, create a plan: without vision, the people will perish (Churchill famously quoted Proverbs 29:18).  The same is true for your workout plan: without a clear, measurable, realistic goal and a way of tracking your progress, you will never succeed.  However, with a complete plan, you have a good start to living a healthier life. Second, make holistic changes: eating right, using exercises that work for your personal goals, and keeping a positive mental attitude are essential components to make any changes stick.  You must meet all aspects to ensure sustainable healthiness.  Third, be patient: changes will not happen overnight, we must wait months or even years before seeing improvement in our health.  Also, some conditions will never change regardless of your health habits.  Be patient with those, and work your health plan around those conditions.  Fourth, be the change you want to see in the world: as voters get to weigh in on the health debate, we can consider how to make an informed decision based on the facts.  I believe that we will be in a much better place to participate in the debate if we value health as a high priority.  By taking care of our bodies and minds, we automatically place health as a high priority.

Tagged as: America, american, care, cigarettes, culture, fitness, health, Motivation, physical, society