Alumni Weekend is a wonderful time to catch up with old friends and celebrate our University and our School. Alumni Weekend also presents the opportunity to become engaged with Penn graduates from across the University through a variety of discussions and activities.
I recently had the opportunity to participate in a discussion on “Health in the Developing World: Meeting the Challenges,” hosted by the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (LDI) and held at The Wharton School. LDI is a cooperative venture of the Schools of Nursing, Medicine, and Dental Medicine, Wharton, the Annenberg School of Communication, and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Along with Dr. Richard Cooper from the School of Medicine and Dr. Mark Pauly from the Wharton School, we discussed three of the many pressing healthcare issues facing citizens around the world — the safety and health of women, worldwide physician and nursing shortages, and healthcare financing systems.
While it is true that around the world, the average life expectancy is higher for women than for men, the quality of life for women is much worse. Women are physically abused, maimed, killed for the actions of their families members, for what others perceive as inappropriate behavior, or simply for being female. Women are trafficked not only by “business associates,” but also by members of their families, and forced into teenage marriages. The many rules and traditions in the developing countries ignore the health, safety, and well-being of women. Achieving global health is not possible without empowering, educating, and financing women’s initiatives.
Global health is profoundly influenced by shortages of healthcare professionals. These shortages have prompted shifting of human resources from the developing to the developed world. Our discussion revealed that the developed world takes doctors and nurses away from countries that desperately need healthcare providers. AIDS, malaria, and other diseases are decimating the populations in Botswana, Sierra Leone and sub-Saharan African nations because there are not enough caregivers to provide care to those who need it most. The developed world has a moral obligation to address the shortage issue first in their countries as well as collaborating with international organizations in providing equitable solutions that are global.
Achieving better health is also not possible without reliable insurance systems available to all citizens. Many countries have universal healthcare, but out of pocket costs are too expensive for many residents, so costly that some families need to choose between paying for everyday necessities or paying for medical services. Solutions to this situation could include creating insurance systems that provide real support and creating community insurance programs in which members of villages pool their money in a common pot controlled by the community and used by the community in case of emergency.
For many of the discussion’s participants, this was the first time they had to opportunity to hear about world health issues directly from those who have been immersed in it for many years. It is an insightful learning experience for all to discuss health-related issues from different fields and perspectives, including engineering, law, and business. We brought to the discussion different angles on the global health problems and provided very different solutions. The different perspectives provided promoted conversations that are necessary to inspire action and evoke change. While it is easy to define the major problems, it is far more complex to outline action plans and even more complex to implement change. Thought leadership, partnership between different disciplines, and intersectional collaborations are “must have” ingredients for solving global health problems.
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