In 1900, the leading causes of death in the U.S. were flu, tuberculosis and gastrointestinal infections. Today, they are heart disease, cancer, and chronic respiratory diseases, with stroke and diabetes in the top ten – largely preventable conditions.*
The problem is, our healthcare system, devoted as it is to acute, curative care, still thinks it’s 1900, with disastrous results. As Ali Ansary, Sandeep “Sunny” Kishore and Jacob Scott, all TEDMED 2012 speakers, wrote in The Huffington Post,
“With increasingly tragic consequences, the reactionary medical paradigm has not provided the preventive care or chronic illness management that our culture needs. Healthcare spending currently consumes 17 percent of our GDP and without a radical shift in thinking, this number may grow even higher.”
Change begins with conversation. To that end, the three have launched a movement called Tomorrow’s Doctor, in which they call for ideas on how to reimagine medicine of the future, starting with med ed. We must re-align priorities, they say, and take advantage of gains already made in technology and public health.
“We need to stop the “imaginectomies” and help, collectively, step by step, to make creativity, imagination and compassion the 21st century standards of medical education.”
Sources: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; New England Journal of Medicine