Health Education leads to Policy Change

When we evaluate the amount of money spent in our hospitals to take care of our patients, it is easy to understand why so many of our doctors are considered the best in the world. Johns Hopkins, Harvard and Washington University in St. Louis, just to name a few, consistently develop physicians that are expected to be better than the rest. What makes our system backward is not the quality of care; it is its distribution. The best care can be bought for inordinate amounts of money, but to look at the problem fundamentally, why are we spending 95% of our money in treating people if prevention can eliminate costly medical care to begin with? With health conditions becoming increasingly prevalent, it is difficult to imagine a scenario where money would be taken away from treatment. When we look at the primary causes of these costly procedures and medications and see conditions like obesity and poor hygiene as the culprits, the case for investing more money in health education and preventative medicine becomes much stronger. AIDS education is slowly increasing the number of those who use condoms if sexually active, vending machines have been restocked with healthier options and exercise programs are becoming more and more common in communities. Health education has the power to inform the population about incorrect or unhealthy practices and eliminate their need for expensive care due to complications from conditions that could have been avoided altogether. The public health sector is attempting at informing the public by targeting youth and advocating safe and healthy alternatives to activities and diets their parents may be used to. To overhaul a system that already has an enormous majority of its money spent on treatment would be a futile endeavor. With small interventions focusing on the grassroots and building up to policy change, we can expect much more practical progress.