Mamma, mamma I'm coming home....

One down, three to go...

I finished pathophys yesterday; now I'm devoting the rest of today to my HMP paper so that'll be finished. Epid final on Friday and biostat next Wed, then I will be homeward bound.

I love epidemiology. It's such a neat field, with numerous components. Yes, there's the usual infectious disease stuff, and cancer rates, and blah blah, but we had a lecture on the future of epidemiology and how it needs to become more socially-based. There's this balance that needs to be met concerning how people view themselves and reminding them that they are within a population. It made me thinking about universal health care and our legal system and what rights people do and do not have. For instance, in the United State, people are guaranteed the right to smoke a million cigarettes a day, but aren't guaranteed health care. Now, maybe this is a good thing -- people who make the effort to destroy their health maybe shouldn't be treated with the care and concern in a health setting that those people who eat well, exercise, and choose not to smoke and overly-consume alcohol. But, maybe this says something about the direction in which our country needs to find itself.

We don't have the rights to smoke pot or do crack (legally), yet it's okay to fill our body with the 40-some carcinogens in a single cigarette. Maybe that's something legislators need to consider while simultaneously considering human physiology and the effects on cigarettes in every single organ system within our bodies... From glaucoma to cardiovascular disease, these substances are not okay. Yet, our politicians consistently let those tobacco lobbiests pay them off to keep people smoking...

Yes, politics is complicated. It takes patience and baby-stepping to work toward any positive laws for society (yet, the second our president wants to take away our privacy rights because of a few terroristic threats, the Big Boys are all about it...).

Anyway, I guess my big thought it onto universal health care, which I think is a very important goal for our country. I think we all have the right to life (as was stated in our Declaration of Independence), and part of that is having the means to protect our lives. I would like to see laws passed that go on to protect our safety through health and environmental steps. This needs to happen QUICKLY, as there is more and more of a divide between rich and poor, the privileged and hose without. Perhaps the end goal is far from sight, but there are so many changes that could be made in the way our population lives.

My first proposal is adequate health education. The main target here would be school-children. I remember being in elementary school and learning to recycle and little health issues and thinking it was so neat. If kids can get interested early, it's possible that they can take these ideas home and engage their parents. They need to learn about living safely -- everything from practicing safe sex, washing their hands, and eating whole grains and vegetables, to recycling and not wasting energy. Health has so many factors -- personal, social, and environmental -- that it's necessary to educate children about these early so they can start making wise decisions for how they live their lives early.

Also, within education, parents need to be educated too. This can come from community-wide meetings and health fairs that are easily accessible to all, and especially those who would have access issues like the poor. Parents need to know exactly why certain things are bad for them and their children. I took pathophysiology and learned more than just "smoking is bad, mmmkay." I learned WHY it's bad and HOW it affects your body. Parents need to understand this about major risk factors -- diet, smoking, alcohol. It's really scary to think that even just one night of crazy drinking pays a huge toll on your liver. Some of these children are raised by alcoholic parents, or parents who smoke around the house. NOT OKAY. Even kids who don't like their parents much still take a lot of habits from the way they were raised and apply them to their own lifestyles.

Obviously, not just parents and children, but the general population needs to be educated. People need to step out of ignorance on health and health issues and learn what's going on with their bodies and what sort of diseases and illnesses they need to worry about. They also need to learn not to worry -- because I see that a lot of people run rampant with information if it's misunderstood and create a pandemonium of fear and outrage. Not okay. This is why health education needs to be integrated in a constructive way throughout communities, with educators coming in and really understanding a community's beliefs. People within that community need to be trained to be educators, too, so that they are accessible and approachable. There needs to be huge lines of communication.

I see that only when an extensive educational process throughout our entire country occurs can changes really begin to start to take place. Maybe around the this time is when a system for universal health care should be implemented... Because people will have more knowledge to treat themselves better.

Of course there are huge economic issues that will have to be taken care of, and it needs to be understood that the first generation or two using this health care system will be very expensive. But if the education keeps occurring and the health system really changes to benefit the total population (because, we're taught to concern only ourselves within the American society, so people need to understand that they are a part of a larger picture and need to take care of themselves and their brothers and sisters of the world), the health care system will become less expensive.

Along with this whole system, a series of progressive laws needs to be passed. i.e. The NYC ban of trans fats needs to become a country-wide ban; smoking in public establishments also needs to become this way... Laws that protect all citizens of this country need to be established.

I know, I'm not a policy person. People think that this is impossible to implement in a nation so big and backwards as ours. I agree that it will be hard, but why would we not even try? It will have its issues, but why not start with something do-able, like free health care access for all minors. Heck, those are the ones who are less likely to have started smoking and drinking anyway so their risk factors are primarily genetic and environmental, neither of which they can control!

There are more issues involved, and more disciplines to be involved. But, how neat to have a topic that seems so focused, yet is very broad. I hope that legislators get their heads out of their behinds and focus on more important issues for our entire society, instead of those that either only consider a few, or seem to consider only societies far away (not like I don't think aiding other countries important, but bombing them probably won't help so much...).

Anyway, tangent of the day. I better get to my paper.