May No Sick Person Be Alone!

On May 13, 1992, then-Pope John Paul II established February 11 as the World Day of the Sick, an annual occasion for prayer and reflection and for promoting the assistance and care that is needed – worldwide – for all those who do not enjoy good and complete health.

Every year since then, the Pope has enlivened this Day with a Message in which he encourages us to live life adopting a compassionate and merciful gaze and attitude – like Jesus himself – towards our brothers and sisters who suffer from some kind of illness, towards “all of you, brothers in trial, who are visited by suffering under a thousand forms, who search in vain for the why of human suffering and who ask anxiously when and whence will come relief.” (Closing of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council – To the Poor, the Sick and the Suffering – 8 December 1965).

Health is a condition for personal, family, and social life. Without health, there is no full life, there is no “abundant life” (Jn 101:10). When we lack health, we are put in a situation of need, fragility, and vulnerability.

So important is health for the human being, that – theologically speaking – God’s salvation for man is synonymous with health. For this reason, the messianic times of the coming of the salvation that God offers us in his Son Jesus Christ are announced, both in the Old Testament, as times of salvation in which “the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them” (Mt 11:4-6).

While health care and the preferential attention that the sick must have in every society are important, the institutions and people who dedicate themselves to health care through the exercise of the medical profession are equally important.

I am the CEO of SOMOS Community Care, a network that coordinates more than 2,500 family physicians to provide primary care services to New York City’s most disadvantaged. In this medical organization, we work toward a humanistic vision and mission that views health care from a comprehensive, preventive perspective. We are aware of the importance of personal and collective health care, and we make our best efforts to ensure that our medical, human, and material resources reach those who need them most.

For this reason, among other expanded social welfare projects, the SOMOS Community Care Medical Organization and the Doctor Ramon Tallaj Foundation have implemented a scholarship system for students with academic excellence who, without this support, would not be able to achieve their academic goals of completing their studies in medical and paramedical programs.

For this 32nd World Day of the Sick, on February 11, 2024, Pope Francis’ Message is inspired by the biblical quote, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” (Gen 2:18). Because, says the Pope, “Our lives … are meant to attain fulfillment through a network of relationships, friendships, and love, both given and received. We were created to be together, not alone. Precisely because this project of communion is so deeply rooted in the human heart, we see the experience of abandonment and solitude as something frightening, painful, and even inhuman. This is even more the case at times of vulnerability, uncertainty, and insecurity, caused often by the onset of a serious illness.” For this reason, the Pope summons us all to solidarity, to a closeness with compassion and tenderness.

A society that abandons and forgets those who suffer is also a sick society, in need of health and salvation. “This grim reality is mainly a consequence of the culture of individualism that exalts productivity at all costs, cultivates the myth of efficiency, and proves indifferent, even callous, when individuals no longer have the strength needed to keep pace. It then becomes a throwaway culture in which “persons are no longer seen as a paramount value to be cared for and respected, especially when they are poor or disabled…” (Fratelli Tutti, 18). 

Thus, we are all called to live in the commandment of love, love that simultaneously heals the sick, a love that heals and saves those of us who forget our brothers and sisters in need and those who care for and soothe – from the field of medicine – those who suffer in hospitals.

Let us ask ourselves, in addition to praying, what we can do to ease the burdens of those who suffer most in our society, how we can make the loneliness of the sick and elderly more bearable, how we can lessen the pain of so many brothers and sisters who suffer and in so many ways, because “it is not good for human beings to be alone.”

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Mario J. Paredes is a member of the Board of Directors of the Latin American Academy of Catholic Leaders and a Member of the Board of the American Bible Society. He is CEO of SOMOS Community Care, a social care network of over 2,500 independent providers responsible for reaching and delivering care to over 1 million Medicaid lives across New York City.

 

The underbelly of health care in America—and an answer

The New York Times’s recent coverage of the state of health care in the United States paints a very discouraging picture. Despite all the money going to health care in the country—which outspends other developed nations in spending on health care per capita—the US has a sorry record. In fact, Americans rank among the least healthy compared to other rich countries; they are also in a cohort that is most likely to die early. 

For example, life expectancy in Mississippi, which stands at 71.9, has fallen below the life expectancy in Bangladesh (72.4). An infant in the US is close to 70 percent more likely to die in the US compared to other wealthy nations. And for the first time in what might be a century, the likelihood that an American child will live to age 20 has diminished. Newborns in India, Rwanda, and Venezuela have a longer life expectancy than Native American newborns in the US. The life expectancy of a Native American adult male, at 61.5, is below that of the life expectancy in Haiti.

The so-called “healthy life expectancy—the years someone lives without suffering severe medical problems, like amputations, dialysis, or blindness—is 66.1 in the US, which is lower than that figure in Turkey, Sri Lanka, Peru, and Thailand, as well as other countries, all significantly poorer than the US.

The most gruesome statistic shows the US to be the “global leader in avoidable amputations,” resulting from grave shortcomings in the care and management of diabetes. These preventable amputations writes The Times, “are the most heart-rending symbol of America’s failure in health care. Patients fail to obtain blood sugar management, which leads to diminished circulation and diabetic wounds on the foot that can lead to amputation, first of the toes and next of the legs, both below and above the knee.

A patient whose leg is amputated above the knee generally dies within five years. Some 150,000 amputations are performed each year, of a toe, foot, or leg. The neglect of diabetes and other preventable conditions is really hurting Americans of all ages. The hardest hit are men with little education and low incomes, especially people of color. The poorest men in the US have life expectancies comparable to those of men in Sudan and Pakistan.

By contrast, the wealthiest men in the US live longer than the average male in any country, a Harvard study has found.

Being poor and having little education, makes Americans very likely to suffer from multiple conditions, in addition to diabetes, including hypertension, arthritis, and heart disease. The Times pins an important part of the blame on soda and -fast food companies, marketing their sugary and rich-in-fat products primarily to the underserved, people who struggle to get by, often lacking health insurance and relying on cheap fried food and sugary drinks. As it stands, 28 million Americans lack health insurance.  

Researchers have found that an estimated 183,000 Americans die each year because of poverty—far more than the number of homicides. Part of the solution must focus on overcoming “intergenerational poverty and despair,” which cries out for improvement in education, job training, pay, and opportunities for self-betterment. What would also hold promise is promoting diversity among health workers. It has been shown that Black patients do better with Black doctors.

Ethnic affinity is one of the keys to the success of SOMOS, a network of 2,500 doctors—most of them primary care physicians—in New York City. They provide some one million of the poorest and most vulnerable Medicaid recipients in the inner-city with quality care. Most patients are African American, Asian American, and Hispanic. Many of their doctors share an ethnic and cultural background with their patients, in whose communities they live and work. That shared identity contributes to the bond between patient and doctor.

That bond is also strengthened by the fact that SOMOS doctors have comprehensive knowledge of their patients’ needs. Community Health Workers are the doctors’ eyes and ears, as they are kept informed about patients’ family situations. These include awareness of social conditions, the so-called Social Determinants of health, such as housing conditions, poverty, or educational issues. Such social conditions can play a critical role in patients’ physical and mental health.

Patients also greatly value the fact that the doctor has a real sense of their circumstances, which is the foundation of a relationship of trust. This is how SOMOS delivers superior care to a population that has traditionally suffered from poor or mediocre care.

SOMOS doctors adhere to high standards in their practice. They have embraced a formula called Value-Based Care (VBC), which stipulates that doctors are compensated in accordance with the health of their patients. The better the patients’ health in the longer term, the greater the financial incentive for the doctor.

SOMOS's success was dramatically demonstrated by SOMOS’s ability to reduce by 25 percent both preventable visits to the ER and unnecessary hospitalizations. In the process, SOMOS saved

New York State taxpayers $330M. VBC clearly demonstrates that care for the underserved can be both excellent and cost-effective—an antidote to poverty being an obstacle to quality health care.

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