Five TED Talks to Understand the Most Pressing Healthcare Problems in America
- Dorothy Roberts – the problem with race-based medicine
- Alyson McGregor – Why medicine often has dangerous side effects for women
- Richard Resnick – Welcome to the genomic revolution
- Jane McGonigal – The game that can give you ten extra years of life
- Nadine Burke Harris – How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime
TED Talks have sharply penetrated global consciousness as a source of information, education, and interdisciplinary platform. Speakers from all over the world deliver TED Talks on every possible subject, from crop diversity to human resources management.
One of the central aims of TED Talks is to solve local, national, and global problems. One of the topics TED Talks is increasingly exploring is healthcare – particular in the United States. As the population ages, and as the Affordable Care Act comes under attack under the new administration, the issues American healthcare face grow in number. Here are five TED Talks to understand the most pressing healthcare problems in America.
Dorothy Roberts – the problem with race-based medicine
In this bold and eye-opening TED Talk, Dorothy Roberts discusses the role of race in how patients are treated. She addresses the importance of separating the social racial identity of patients from their genetic legacy, and how how individual patients are often treated differently – personally and medically – by the physicians who see them. Roberts discusses the importance of approaching patients scientifically – without using racial identity as a medical shortcut.
Alyson McGregor – Why medicine often has dangerous side effects for women
As our understanding of gender and sex grows, so too does our understanding of the impact of medicine on human beings of different genders or sexes – for better or for worse. Dr. Alyson McGregor discusses the link between medicine and negative impacts on women. She discusses the fact that, year after year, many drugs are taken off the market due to side effects that occur specifically in women – all due to lack of appropriate medical testing on female animals and human beings.
Richard Resnick – Welcome to the genomic revolution
At this point in human history, the human genome has been fully mapped. By sequencing the human genome, we have dramatically expanded our understanding of the role of genes in disease development – and prevention. Richard Resnick comprehensively explains how genomic sequencing works, and how its expansion in the twenty-first century has had a huge impact on modern medicine. He discusses how genomic sequencing can not only help to effectively treat disease, but even prevent it from ever gaining a foothold in the human body – helping human beings to live longer and higher-quality lives.
Jane McGonigal – The game that can give you ten extra years of life
Mental health – and mental illness – has frequently been at the forefront of discussions about health for most of the last decade. With depression being a common diagnosis among Americans, in addition to anxiety and post-traumatic stress, mental illness and suicide prevention is national problem that many are still struggling to understand and work to solve. In her comprehensively technical, moving, and highly amusing TED Talk, Jane McGonigal presents a game she designed to help enhance and maintain mental health and family relationships – and how playing the game can ultimately add ten years to your life.
Nadine Burke Harris – How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime
The connection between childhood trauma and lifelong health has been researched for decades. Childhood trauma can arrest brain development, endocrinal development, and alter DNA patterns. In her informational and hard-hitting TED Talk, Nadine Burke Harris discusses the role of childhood trauma in disease development later on, from depression to cancer. She addresses the importance of introducing screenings for childhood trauma as a standard part of preventative medicine – to improve quality of life from early childhood to old age.
Each of these TED Talks addresses a different aspect of issues in American healthcare – and can help every citizen to understand the role of these issues in their own lives and the lives of those closest to them.
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