Mehmet Oz and the Founding of HealthCorps
Mehmet Oz: About five years ago, I got called to the Emergency Room to see a patient who had blocked his all major arteries of the heart. Not an unusual event, unfortunately in this country, we do a couple hundred thousand of this coronary artery bypass grafting operations a year. But when I went down to the room, I opened the curtain and I was looking at a 25-year-old Latina woman. And I was shocked and I realized that this whole time that I thought we’re improving healthcare in America by bringing up better ways doing bypass surgery on people, we’re missing the boat, because if a 25 year old is having a disease of a 60 year old, we’re [abdicating] our responsibility to make a difference in the health of the youth of America. And so, I created HealthCorps, which is an organization just like the PeaceCorps. In fact, thanks to the PeaceCorps, we have found many of the same tricks they used this for success. For example, we take young college graduates who’ve got all that vital energy and enthusiasm, and we put them, instead of Sub-Sahara Africa and [IB], we put them in high schools around the country to teach kids only a few years younger than them about their bodies. They make it edgy. They make it hip and it’s cool to learn about your body from someone only a couple years older than you. And by… with these kinds of mentorship programs, we can take volunteers, put them in schools and teach a lot of kids and we make them into activists, because at the end of the day, it’s not just about what you eat and how you exercise, it’s about [make to resilience], how to get tough enough to deal with the modern world and HealthCorps seeks to get these kids tough enough to go out and change, the foods that are available in their environments. They get them to go home and audit their refrigerator, they get them to make a difference, and that’s I hope my legacy, that we train a generation of folks who will [appreciate] how special the most valuable thing they’ve ever given their bodies really are.
Discuss
Grace Webb on June 19, 2009, 2:56 PM
Best idea I’ve heard in a long time. How about extending the program to trained nurses and doctors? They could get financial help with their educations and then commit to a year working in underserved areas where many people lack health insurance. What about HealthCorps clinics all over the country? In the long run, preventative health measures and education have always been shown to save lives and money. I think Bristol Palin is doing a great job educating her peers about early, unplanned pregnancy. As Oz says, most kids will listen more to people their own age.
LaWanda L Walker on July 15, 2009, 4:16 PM
Rick Bhlak on July 26, 2009, 12:34 AM
I couldn’t agree more with this. Informing people of the issues while they are young is really important. I think this is one of the biggest things missing in the proposed health care plans that are trying to be pushed through right now. The best way to reduce the cost of healthcare is to reduce the number of people who get sick and the severity of the sicknesses that they do get. And how you do that is through education and preventative care!
Add a Comment
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or Register