Values, Vibes and Vibrancy: A Journey to Contemplation

 By Gwen Mahoney (Neuroscience, ’27)

It’s official, I have met someone who is beyond vibrant, matches all the vibes and has an eye for the values of those around her. This woman would be Professor Jill Olivier. She met with us (after breakfast at Truth Café) at the University of Cape Town and talked to us about health policy and systems. In the United States, we often think of health systems as healthcare systems, but this is not the case in South Africa. In fact, this is not the case in many other countries around the globe.

Jill defined a health system as all organizations, people, and actions whose primary intent is to promote restore or maintain health. This is something that I had not thought of, as often we talk about a health system as simply healthcare in the United States, when in reality, a health system should function for the health of a population as a whole. She touched on the different aspects of shaping a health system, and one that stood out to me was values and the way in which they shape our decisions and actions. In the United States, we tend to have a very individualistic approach to our actions, and we tend to focus as a society on “othering“ rather than focusing on the community that we are all a part of.

Some of the values that shape South African health systems are: (1) universality, which is one’s legal right to healthcare, (2) accessibility, which is the ability to get equal access, and (3) equity, which is the absence of unfair differences. Most African countries have universality, and people are able to access healthcare -- and have a legal right to do so no matter their class or their race. Right now a big conversation is the institution of national health insurance in South Africa. What was interesting to me is that this was not a conversation of who has a legal right to healthcare, but how that legal right is accessed, whether it be through national health insurance or through funding, and who should hold onto that funding, whether it be the government or the people.

This got me thinking a lot about the way that the United States participates in healthcare as we are a country that focuses largely on private access and private means of care. She touched on the way that values shape agreement in a country. Values or something that are woven into the very fiber of being a human. She brought up the idea that if each state was its own individual country, they might be able to achieve more agreement on the core values, resulting in a more solid system not just around health systems, but in general.

I think that overall, this conversation about values is something that we all need to think about and contemplate in our own lives. Where do our values come from? Who has impacted our values? And in what ways do our values change throughout our lifetime?

One final thing that she mentioned was that in order for a system to be successful system, there has to be participation of all people no matter any part of their identity; they are included in their whole form. She poses the question who has the power to complain, be heard and have a response? I think that this is something we need to contemplate in our own lives. Who do we listen to here and respond to? Are there others that we are leaving out of our conversation?