We must reimagine the exchange of services and goods for our health and well-being. We need to ask what profit truly means when it happens at our expense. How do we create partnerships where we all reap the health, financial, and well-being benefits? How do we ensure that we are seen as narrators of our stories with the ability to retain the freedom to shape our lives in ways consistent with our character and loyalties throughout our lifetime?
In my search to write about how we, as individuals, see value and quality in social and medical services, I concluded that no matter how we see it, our social and medical needs are tangled with the economic stake of corporations and their investors. Health and Social Needs are a tool to profit, and social and medical services are the means to achieve these profits.
In the last 100 years, our government and society have been at constant war with ourselves. We keep declaring war on poverty, hunger, homelessness, cancer, diabetes, drugs, bail reform changes, and other wars we, as a larger society, continue to wage on social and medical issues. This path produces not a reduction in our social and medical problems but an increase.
We must start framing our conversations around values, meanings, and stories. We need to create narratives that don’t focus on individual deficits and circumstances in the initial stages; instead, we start with learning about their goals, skills, and aspirations.
Trabiam Shorters, founder and CEO of social impact organization BMe Community, has pioneered “asset-framing”, a storytelling approach based on the work of social scientist Dr. Daniel Kahneman. Shorters define people by their aspirations and not their problems or challenges. In his work, he recognized that mission statements and “success stories” are seen through the point of view of “deficit-framing.” In his view, when we define a person or community by their problems or challenges, we unintentionally do a few things:
- Defining people in need in terms of their problems.
- Undercut individual storytelling ability by setting up a less compelling, negative story.
- Reinforce a scarcity mindset that leads to hopelessness.
Instead, Trabiam Shorters wants agencies and professionals to focus on the “asset framing” approach. Our efforts need to highlight individuals’ strengths and recognize their humanity first. We need to see who each person is as an individual. At the heart of each individual lies inherent values that we all share: truth, honesty, loyalty, love, peace, kindness, empathy, compassion, patience, etc. We must listen to their life stories and find their outlook on current needs, wants, and dreams.
Care professionals need to recognize that there are infinite possibilities when we see every individual with skills, desires, abilities, goals, and accomplishments. We need to assist them with reframing experiences and guiding them to rediscover their resiliency and creativity for their lives to have meaning and purpose even in difficult times. We also need to highlight and re-establish connections, whenever possible, with family, friends, community, and religious networks to become a great source of strength and support.
Social and medical services need to transition to a supportive yet finite role to ensure that individuals are armed with the tools to become wealthy in their physical, mental, and financial health. After all, any intervention can pose risks and sacrifices. It can only be justified if the interventions serve the larger aims of improving an individual’s well-being and health.
And we must recognize that we will eventually and unavoidably face our decline. Not if, but when it happens, we should plan the necessary steps to ensure that our lives continue to be meaningful when our bodies and minds break down. We must be attentive to nutrition, medications, and our living situation to have the best chance to live in our old age.
