S1:E9 - The Flexner Report vs Community Care

Hey y'all!

This week's podcast is a little view into how community healthcare changed with the Flexner Report of 1910, taking the world of whole person wellness into what it is today.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the podcast for Mom Strange Magic. My name is Kim. I am the voice and face behind Mom Strange Magic, and I would like to just start off this week's podcast with a little bit of a meditation. So let's just take a moment to think of something that gives us a sense of joy. I'm not asking you to overlook anything in the world. I'm not asking you to, I'm not doing any spiritual bypassing or anything like that. It doesn't matter who you are or how you voted, where you come from, what you believe. It is difficult, excuse me. Knee deep in allergy season. Um we all have something that makes us suffer, right? So we all have something that ke gets us, stops us from being grounded in who we are. So I just want to take a moment. Um, if you're listening to this while you're driving or doing something that you need your hands, you don't have to do this, just kind of get your mind, you know, just focused. You know, I really hope you're not doing meditation while you're driving, but you know, you can come back and listen to this part later. All right, so here we go. Just put your hand on your chest and feel the rise and fall of your breath as you breathe in and out. And on the in-breath, when you're breathing in, think about that thing which makes you happy, makes you feel good. It can be anything. It can be a song, a person, an outfit. And when you breathe out, let go of the stress and just see that stress being transformed into light. Just breathe in a good thing. Breathe out the stress and let it go into light. Do that a couple more times. Just breathe in and breathe out. And you don't even have to do any visualization. Just breathe in. And breathe out. And then just take a few seconds and just sit with yourself, feeling the rise and your breath. All right. So everyone knows that it's weird. Um, and I use that word uh lightly because as someone that has been called weird the majority of their life, um I both claim it and try to understand it because it's often used as um and in kind of a negative connotation, like, oh, that's weird, like that's bad. Um, but what it really means is that things are just not, it's just something that you're not used to, right? And and that's why I am okay with being called weird, because honestly, the way that I am, the person that I present, it it is not always easy for others to understand what I where I come from, right? And that used to be a huge issue for me. I couldn't understand why what was I doing wrong that made people not like me. Why did um what you know, it when it was all about me. Um, but that's we'll just say that right now things are a little bit chaotic for everyone. Again, doesn't matter who you voted for, who you're married to, what you eat for dinner, whatever. Um, but there's a whole group of people who have lived in that kind of chaos for years. And I'm not just talking about the people that live in a specific country or other countries, I'm talking about these type of people that live all over the world, and that's the people that either due to circumstance or due to things that are out of their control because they have health issues or whatever, they live below the poverty line, right? Now, I'm not gonna go into this arbitrary how we got the how we define what the prop poverty take two, poverty level is. Um, you know, personally, I believe there's some shenanigans involved and how that if we decided that all of a sudden this was if you made below or above or whatever, um we humans just love to put things into categories and boxes to try to make, you know, whatever. Anyway, not for today. So all over the world, there are communities that are not do not have abundance of resources, or by the standards of some list maker somewhere, they would be considered as being in poverty. These communities often have someone that knows a lot of things about a lot of things, how to fix things, how to help you feel better, what plant might be good to use as um a skin when you get a bite from a bug. What what plant, what meant plant is the best for upset stomachs. And very often these people, here's my segue, very often these people presented whole person care, right? So you didn't have to, there were no restrictions, you got whole person care. If it if you were having a hard time with your kids and they were all sniffly, you gave them a way, you gave that family away to find some rest. Um, it was they these women, mostly women, were, and this is throughout history, um, were kind of either born into it or decided to do it or got the call to do it or whatever, but they presented themselves. Here comes a cat, by the way. As you all know, there's always cats, and this is a podcast, you can't see them, but you might hear them. And this this person or these group of people were the ones that knew how that knew you didn't just treat the cold, you made sure that the person had rest. You made sure that the person had good shoes and and access to clean water and things of that nature. And I see online a lot of folks talking about the the greeny women or the whatever of Appalachia. And I talk about this, and I talked a little bit about it in a previous podcast, but the thing that I am seeing more and more, and just really a lot since since last week's podcast, is this sort of deity-like worship of a decentralized, here comes the cat, the centralized, it's it's patches, this healthcare system that we have in the United States, and how centralized medicine does not always take into account the whole person, as it once did, right? And if you know anything about kind of the history of how we got to this point, there is something called the Flexner Report, okay, or the Flexner Act, but the Flexner Report. And what the Flexner Report was is something that was created by the Carnegie, yeah. Checking my notes. So it was it was, you know, and I and I'm very careful to say like not use names because people are gonna hear this and they're gonna go down some rabbit hole and then whatever. But the the premise of this was that Flexner wanted to move medicine away from what was considered unsciety, unscient, y'all can't speak today, to move it away from unscientific practices, right? When and but the the the practices that were scientific were laid out by other people. And it wanted to kind of mirror another university, particularly Johns Hopkins, um, where you needed a college degree to get admission. And let me just say this that I I really would prefer that any wellness provider that I see, from an herbalist to a specialist, have some education that is kind of backed by a mentor, right? Some mentor that has um experience in that. I'm I'm a huge supporter of people's medicine um and self-advocation. Maybe I just self-advocating for yourself. And one of the reasons why I wanted to be more versed in things like herbalism and a more um complementary wellness path. I did seek mentors and I did get certificates and I did learn things um to make sure that I wasn't just doing a 72, you know, like a weekend thing on which herbs you can eat or go to one foraging class and think that the mushrooms in my backyard are safe to eat, right? So um I very much understand that the wellness industry, both conventional and um not so good, not so conventional, it's like a billions of dollars industry, right? So that's just something um and it and it preys on your fear and insecurity. So let me let me carry on. So you you needed to have a college degree, and who were the people that couldn't get the college degree, right? Um, it was the poor and those that were uh minorities, particularly females, um African Americans, the and also the Scotch, the Irish, people from other countries. So they wanted this to be like this was gonna be the gold standard of care. But what it did is that it closed schools that were giving important education, right? Uh historically African-American colleges and colleges that allowed women to come in and learn nursing, like uh, and not just um greeny woman kind of nursing, but traditional, like conventional nursing, um, which was revolutionary for a lot of people. It helped many people get access to care at home that they would not have been able to get if they'd gone in to see the doctor. So it was really, you know, there there is a a sweet spot where both sides of this wellness coin can work together to to treat the whole person. And so what happened was you know, there's kind of these flexnerian ambitions that prioritized academic elitism over communic over the care provided within the community. And you you, you know, in order to be a doctor, and really now it is it is quite expensive. And you know, people say, oh, well, you can get scholarships, and oh, that's why doctors' fees are so high, and that's why this and this and this and this. Yes. However, there are what has happened in the healthcare system now is so wild. Um, but so this report and trying to get this gold standard of care that was really heavy on lab work, like lab work, right? You can charge for lab work. And again, is lab work, am I against lab work? No, I think it's I think it has its place if used correctly. Um but so the goal was to create a particular type of student, which is usually someone that was wealthy and someone that was white and who could afford the years of um where they didn't earn anything, right? So they're not they're not getting paid. And if you know anything about becoming an actual um medical doctor, that they're you you keep paying even when you're working. So it's it's such a weird, what's a weird system. So this Flexner report pretty much closed most of the black medical schools, the African-American schools. I think like two were left open. So they're this is what has created a deficit of African-American physicians right now. Um there are a lot of minorities that cannot get into healthcare. And then there's this, you know, and women, women, they, you know, they these schools were supposed to be co-ed, but they drew they they took the women out. They were like, nope, no women here, sorry, you can't do that. Um, and it really just focused on this biomedical model. Um, what is the biological cause of disease? Um, and it's not a real stretch to see where this could have opened the door to things like eugenics, um, just saying, and uh, you know, that this was something that you could put down, you could have facts like you know, you could say, oh, well, this person's blood shows this. So, I mean, it's just it's it's it's tough to say things like, I believe in the the art of science in healthcare, but also understand that the model that we have now was set up to sort of see who was the best and most healthy at things, which again was sort of, you know, not to be all like get out your aluminum foil chapeau, but it it is it was kind of a bridge to that. Who was who you know, only the wealthy people could afford the care. And it's just so it it just and this isn't just me making things up, and you know, if you want me to fact check me, you can just look up the disparity in health care that was created by the Flexner Report. Sometimes it says Flexner Act, but the Flexner Report. So it pushed public health, right? And out. They didn't look at things like whether there was good food to eat, whether the house was safe, did the family have enough money? And that it made community health as this kind of less prestigious way of taking care of people, you know. Oh, well, these are the people that um can't afford to come in and get their lab work, so we'll put in place some kind of community care. And a lot of times it was not the women or men that had been taking care of the community previously. Sorry, there was cat skin. Um, it was somebody that had gotten an education that never never had been in the community and went in and was like, Well, guns ablaze, and here we go. This is how it's gonna be, and this is what you're gonna do, and didn't even stop to work with them and see that a lot of these people thought that this the lab work and the x-rays and things, they thought that they were really kind of against God, right? They didn't, if if God had intended them to get x-rays, and you know, you want to be critical of that, right? We think, oh, you know, we get on social media and someone's like, let me tell you how stupid these people are, they don't even blah blah blah blah blah. And you know, and no one tries to go into that community and see that you know what's going on, and so this created this these medical deserts, right? Where there were the the health care was in urban areas, and then really just going after these community wellness providers, and it this also made it uh there was uh the rural doctors, there's a lot of rural doctor shortages, and you know, um these are the people, right? These are the people that grow your food, these are the people that mine for coal that runs your electric car, these are the people that um have been called names and political arguments of both sides. These are the people that if anything, oh here comes whiskey. All the cats have come today. Um that you the people that keep your lights on are the people that are losing access to health care, and you know, you that is getting covered up by the uh content creation of my my hailbilly grandmother was a witch. And um, here's why she was a witch, because she used pine tar on um whatever. I'm not even gonna say it because someone will hear it and try to do it. Um, you know, or she talked to the flowers, or she knew how to plant by the moon. Yes, and she was Baptist, um probably, or maybe Methodist, or maybe Presbyterian, but I can tell you pretty much nine times out of ten, that granny was a Christian, and she would not have done anything without including prayers. Um, so you know, your fourth great grandmother that lived in the holler and was the medicine keeper for the people of her community was not a witch. Um, and she would have taken part of her health care kit would have been a Bible, um, maybe some blessing oil that had either been prayed over by her or the pastor of her church. She would have been doing this most likely with the blessing of the pastor in her church. And some of the early um, especially like in the Quakers, right? The Quakers, they had their simples and they distilled you know plants into healing. And a lot of that was traditionally women's work, and so and that got taken away and turned into this standardized model of care that um can be you can charge for it, it can be quantified, and it is how everything is run. And now you see that even in the um in the way that people that are more holistic, or you know, the uh whatever. Um, and it that model has traveled to where we have made health care not even affordable for anyone. And I just realized that my mic stopped working. Oh no, wait, it is ah this day, I swear this whole week. Um, and so you know, these are things that we need to think about when we get all upset about things on the internet, that the the model of care that we have or the standard of well-being is not always what it seems to be, and that it's important for us to step outside of what we think is right and look at what is good. How can we help these people? How can we incorporate the standard of care? Um, and you know, the the things that this has caused now is that low income families cannot get prescriptions. For medicine they need. You um we have a system that's really great at treating a crisis but doesn't know how to keep from uh you know saying don't have chronic disease, but then you know goes off the rails about how poor people don't eat good food. But you know what? Poor people don't have good food to eat because the price of food is so incredibly expensive and they can't find jobs. So you have this like vast spectrum between the have and have nots, and it makes it so that nobody gets health care, and you've disconnected the healers from the neighborhood, and you've turned them into witches or spooky cottage core girls or cottage core guys or whatever. It doesn't, it doesn't have it is just cultural erasure and it is gatekeeping, um, you know, that these cultural healing traditions is that you know, you we don't have midwives, we don't have a community herbalist, and a lot of times the community herbalist that is there is that has the training and has worked with the mentors is so overworked that they can't help anybody, and these people find someone that did their little weekend course in herbalism and wouldn't really even know, you know, and doesn't do a full intake or doesn't ask the things that they need to, and you get you get people that go to the doctors and they get talked down to. You see it more and more every day. It's like, well, who's the doctor here? Well, we know who it is, um, that's why we're here. So it became so again, so the this Flexner stuff made medical school expensive and somewhat for the elites and the healers and the caretenders um of the community were turned into witches and bad people, and um you know it erased so much, so much, it erased. And uh it what we've got set up now pretty much ensures that the people that provide the care will see the exact same kind of people that get the care. And I don't know. Um this is just something that I've wanted to talk about for a long time, but usually I get all fired up and I get all like about it. But you know, this is not just some kind of I decided that uh after reading a Reddit post that I was gonna talk badly about the healthcare system. Um I have lived it. I lived it um for 12 years, in fact, and even before that. Um I I have seen what it can do to people that have very bad health illnesses. Uh health illness. I can I've seen when it's done to those that have chronic health issues, I've seen when it's done to those that don't have the resources or financial capability to go and get this type of care. I've seen what it does to it to communities, I've those that don't have the economic advantage. Um, and I have lived, I mean, again, I have lived this, and I have worked with people that have also lived it. And in doing that, I've tried to find a way where we can bridge the gap between the conventional and the holistic, right? Where it's collaboration instead of um, you know, working together instead of somebody, you know, like, well, I'll I'll I'll give in if you do this. Like, no, it's truly collaborative, and then it treats the whole person regardless of whatever. And there's always gonna be people that have more money, that are gonna have their own whatever, and that's that's just how it is. But I think if we want to truly revolutionize the healthcare system, we need to stop pointing our fingers at the other side and realize that if we make a bridge between these two, then it will allow a lot more people of any demographic, of any financial whatever, it will allow more people to have a good standard of care. Um, so thanks for coming to my TED Talk. Ha ha ha. Um, so some updates. I'm trying to the being making a website is like it is like a thorn in my paw. Um, I I don't know what I'm doing with that, but I'll figure it out and all will be well. Um, but you can find me on YouTube and Instagram and Facebook, and I'm testing TikTok, but really, y'all, I'm just gonna tell you that I think I'm gonna just be sticking to YouTube. But hey, I'm trying these things because we don't know how they will they will work until they try we try, right? So um yeah, anyway, I really am grateful for you, and I'm thankful that for the listeners, and I'm thankful for the comments and all of that. So um feel free to drop me any kind of message that pulls on you. I will do my best to get back to you within three days. Yeah, it takes me about three days to get back to folks um via email, and um yeah, so uh stay well. Um know that you are loved, and I see you out there shining brightly as the sun.