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| Sadly my HSM involves far less singing |
That it certainly will, but in the mean time, I'm playing catch-up with a group of classmates with years of experience in the field. While they analyze high-end healthcare reform details, I'm taking note of acronyms and phrases and trying to establish a foundational knowledge while keeping up with current debates. I'm lucky to have had good health to date, and been spared the pain of (and subsequent familiarity with) loved ones with chronic illness. Thus, my prior personal exposure to the healthcare industry has been minimal. My evenings, in between scanning endless reports, have subsequently involved googling terms like "catastrophic care" and, embarrassingly enough, even basic terms like "Rx."
My experience with healthcare comes from past experience in the advocacy field during my college years, campaigning for greater global HIV/AIDS funding and supporting youth rights. Through a passion for such causes, I acquired a rights-based perspective on the industry, lobbying for access to generic AIDS drugs and sharing in the emotion and passion of HIV-positive activists. Now, sitting in an auditorium listening to the Chief Global Strategy Officer for the world's leading generic manufacturer, I find myself studying the concerns from the other side of the table. As you might guess, it feels entirely different. Like two different languages. There is a notable absence of the emotion and 'fuzziness' I had previously been used to, replaced instead by graphs and data and talk of acquisitions and entry strategies.
But it's not all coldblooded profitability and market strategy. Following that talk is one on healthcare quality improvement by a Duke cardiologist. Similarly, his talk is filled with charts and numbers, from a dizzying array of medical studies. But at the same time, he infuses his talk with a passion for making sick people healthy and helping to solve America's complex healthcare problems.
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| Activists from the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa |
Activists are by nature very focused on action, but in my experience it was actions targeting media coverage and pressuring politicians. The activists that I admired most tended to be those who were doctors (or medical students) who combined the rhetoric with the technical skills to actually provide help.
Sadly, a longstanding aversion to blood swayed me away from medicine from a young age (perhaps to my father's chagrin). But seeing the sort of impact that these practitioner/academics/teachers before me make on a daily basis is truly inspiring. I hope one day to be capable of making a similar difference in the lives of the needy, balancing the analytical rigor of a McKinsey consultant with the passionate humanism of the AIDS activist.
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On another note, one of the main reasons I chose Fuqua was CASE - the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship. One of our professors, Cathy Clark, was just at a White House conference on the 'impact economy' ('impact' presumably referring to the social and environmental) and wrote an exciting post about it. (related Social Edge discussion) While a healthy skepticism about the latest flavor of do-gooder concepts is critical, I am buoyed by the increasingly mainstream trend of people focused on social development.
