What is the connection between societal values and health? Is there an additional connection to the way we build institutions? How about the way we frame societal goals and solutions? My guest for this episode of Respecting Health is Carlos Torelli. Dr. Torelli is Professor of Marketing, Head of the Department of Business Administration, and Anthony J. Petullo Professor of Business Administration at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
In this episode he discusses the various ways we see ourselves as individuals and how that affects the development of cultures. Do we see ourselves as individuals? Or do we see ourselves as part of something larger? It can be fairly complicated! Dr. Torelli walks us through this complex landscape of values. He provides excellent examples of how this affects both societal values and health. Individualist and collectivist cultures tend to process everything from very different perspectives. Topics here range from how cultures define medicine to how they create care systems. Using Covid as one example, Dr. Torelli addresses what happens within a society when individual and collective values are in conflict. This article by Dr. Torelli et. al. goes into more detail and provides a fantastic overview of these concepts.
In the end, we must assess whether health is important for everyone. We must also ask whether a healthy populace makes for better societies. If we truly want to improve global health, which to me seems a noble goal, we must look at societal values and health. Until we examine these, our goals may be based on outdated values that end up being shortsighted. If that is the case, then they might not help us get to the future we hope for. I learned a lot from this discussion, and I hope you did too.
We welcome your comments via email at feedback@respectinghealth.com or scroll down and join the discussion!
-Rod Piechowski
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