Aetna 2002 Annual Report Download - page 23

Behavior Matters
 , ..
President and Executive Director, Center for the Advancement of Health
Scientific breakthroughs go only so far. People must act
to prevent and manage disease.
Seeking a genetic test for breast cancer, giving up smoking, feeding the kids fruit for dessert,
getting an annual flu shot, or responding to the threat of smallpox — it is largely behavior
that links biomedical science to improving the health of individuals.
The most breathtaking advances in health have an impact only if individuals act on that
scientific knowledge to prevent, treat and manage illnesses.
But it is dangerous to believe that people simply need to be told how to behave and they’ll
comply — and if they don’t, they deserve to be sick. Regrettably, humans are not that recep-
tive to direction. Most Americans, for example, are aware of the dangers of being sedentary
and overweight, yet growing numbers are both.
What will it take to make behavior an effective tool for better health?
In part, it will require making reliable information readily available from different sources
in multiple languages, tailored to the needs of a population whose diversity of culture and
literacy grows daily.
But information, while necessary, is not usually sufficient to motivate people to change
lifelong habits like smoking, or even to induce them to maintain a short-term regimen; the
number of people who manage to take a full course of antibiotics as directed is abysmally
small. Even armed with adequate information, people still confront real barriers to action.
The behavior of individuals is heavily influenced by where they live and work, how they were
raised and educated, and the choices available to them. Working a -hour day leaves little
time for exercise; the lack of a safe place to walk makes it impossible. Obstacles to healthy
behavior — and, thus, to health — exist at every level of society, and poverty magnifies them.
More immediately, the challenge is to arrange incentives and eliminate barriers so that all
Americans can have the opportunity to behave in ways that protect their health. This respon-
sibility lies not only with health care providers, but also with those who are accountable for
safe neighborhoods, good schools, and clean air and water.
The nation’s investment in high-technology biomedicine has produced remarkable scien-
tific accomplishments, nurturing beliefs that health care services determine well-being and
that medical advances will soon make the daily grind of staying healthy obsolete. Neither
belief is valid.
We must adopt a systematic, evidence-driven approach to strengthening the critical link
between the forces we know affect health and what we do about them in our daily lives.
Because when it comes to the prevention, management and cure of disease, genes matter,
access to health care matters, drugs matter, but behavior really matters.
 