There are, of course, things that individuals can do to improve their own health. I'm not arguing that humans have no agency whatsoever BUT At a population level, "personal responsibility" is simply meaningless
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You can point people towards unprocessed food all you want: if it's still far cheaper/easier to eat KFC, your health advocacy is probably going to have little to no effect
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We also know that this sort of health advocacy is most effective for people who are already well-off. A major part of my PhD is addressing the inequities caused by providing health services in an inequitable way
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For example, one study found that people were less likely to use a free weight control app if they were poor, non-white, or had multiple comorbidities
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This is true across the board - if you run a health intervention, the people who are at the top already will usually benefit the most It's formally describe in public health in the equity effectiveness looppic.twitter.com/VjJ69sGQVD
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The basic idea is that a health intervention - say, a mobile self-management app - has to go through stages to be effective. Someone has to have access to it, download it, use it, continue to use it, and benefit from it
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At each stage in this cycle, social factors get in the way If you don't have a phone, you can't access an app If you don't understand the language used for the app, you can't download or use it And on, and on
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Ultimately, personal responsibility is a great thing to tell an individual, but not useful at all at the population level
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If you truly want to improve outcomes, you have to address larger social outcomes rather than talking about what actions individuals do and do not take
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I've written about all of this before - it's more expensive and politically difficult to change the environment, but if we don't we'll probably never address many of our disease problemshttps://medium.com/@gidmk/personal-responsibility-is-a-meaningless-term-8c1f7732993b …
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Health Nerd Retweeted Chelsea Watego
Also important to note, this is not just limited to health. As this thread aptly demonstrates, welfare and social programs are interlinked with healthcare effortshttps://twitter.com/drcbond/status/1059568949359038465 …
Health Nerd added,
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