No Boundaries

If any of you teach, then you know how an inspiring teacher can be mesmerizing to an otherwise tired, overloaded group of students. I’m not often that rousing teacher, but this year, I became a fan of TED Talks to help create that bolt of motivation when it was lacking. A TED Talk by physician and author Abraham Verghese, on the importance of a doctor’s touch, was a class favorite. If you have a few minutes to spare, click on the link and you will see why.

Ben's parent caregivers on his 8th birthday, 2009

A relative of TED–Technology, Entertainment, Design–is TEDMED, an annual conference which brings together 1,200 people (more than half of them from outside the field of medicine), in one place over 3 1/2 days to share innovative ideas of how to address the most pressing health care challenges. It’s not a place for stuffy academics (although the most cool ones are often there). It’s a place for people to share ideas from outside of medicine to reshape how our country provides health care. I SO wish I was in DC right now, where the conference is taking place April 10-13.

Although only the bigshots are there, you and I can participate in TEDMED by voting on what we consider the biggest challenges in health care right now. I think our country’s caregiving crisis is one of those challenges–and so does Suzanne Geffen Mintz, founder of the National Family Caregivers Association, and caregiver to a husband with multiple sclerosis. I’ve been reading the NFCA e-newsletter for years, and I’ve followed their legislative progress as they lobby Congress to pass bills that provide more support to the 44 million Americans who provide free caregiving to aging parents, Veterans who return from combat disabled, and medically complicated children. It’s an industry worth $350 billion dollars, if it were actually paid for, but right now, 80% of informal, long-term caregiving is provided at home, at a financial loss to the family.

But it’s a problem of a national scale. 60% of caregivers are women (40% are therefore men), and many of these people are unemployed or underemployed, not earning Social Security or contributing to their pension plans. And, not surprisingly, many caregivers report worse health, including mental health, than people who are not caregivers. We all know my health struggles as a caregiver–and we know there are millions of others out there like me. It’s obvious, but I’ll state it–caregivers with depression are not so good about taking care of the health needs of those for whom they are caring.

Please show TEDMED that you agree that the caregiver crisis is indeed one of America’s greatest health challenges and which requires the efforts of innovators and entrepeneurs around the world to start solving. Vote for #34 at this link!. Your votes will help set the next agenda for TEDMED.

I wonder if any of the leaders and innovators at TEDMED are considering less technologically-advanced innovations to address the the mental health crisis for caregivers–a more “back to basics” approach of a doctor’s touch, a listening ear, a shoulder to lean on. I think Abraham Verghese would agree with me, as would many of Ben’s physicians who have provided just that to us over the last 10 years.