As explained by Heath, the concept of upstream is the process of preventing a problem from happening other than trying to solve it after it has happened. Upstream involves looking at the top of the problem, identifying or detecting the main factors that cause the problem earlier, and solving them from the top other than waiting till the problem has happened. However, Downstream has been explained as solving the problem after it happened. Instead of focusing on the main cause of the problem, downstream considers finding solutions to the problem after it has occurred. If the problem has occurred, the cost of solving the problem will be high, and most people will try to avoid the cost. Therefore a person or an organization needs to invest in the prevention f the problem. In healthcare, for instance, hospitals need to focus on guiding the people on whether they need to live a healthy life and avoid incurable diseases (Heath, 2020). Healthy living will reduce the chances of hospital visits with serious illnesses that will take a lot of money and resources to heal. Most countries would prefer to refer cancer patients to countries with advanced medical systems, which will cost a lot, instead of focusing on improving their medical systems and treating people from within the country. Therefore people may end up dying while waiting to get treatment abroad while the problem could have been solved if the hospitals had the necessary equipment. To measure the lives and injuries saved, it is important to look at the lives lost downstream or solve the problem and compare them with the lives or the injuries that could have been saved if the preventive measures could have been taken (Heath, 2020).
The American healthcare system can be considered a downstream financial problem as it focuses on the problem other than the factors that cause it. The healthcare system makes its financial investments in chronic disease treatments, emergency services, surgery, pharmacology, and dialysis, which utilizes a lot of money. The healthcare system offers these services to people at a high fee since they also get the commodities to make these services at a high cost. The American healthcare system can be considered downstream as the rates of infant mortality and life expectancy are very high, signifying that the healthcare systems are not taking the right initiative in preventing the problem from the source. Instead, they are trying to solve the problem after it has happened. Upstream can be used in the American healthcare system to educate the communities on the best strategies to reduce the rate of disease infection through learning and advice from specialists on social, economic, and healthy lives and improvements (Amanda Merck, 2018). The American healthcare system should look at the causes of these problems. For instance, chronic diseases in children can be addressed by looking at the nutrition, physical activities, maternal use, and the use of harmful drugs other than focusing on giving medications to reduce the disease’s spread rate. The upstream strategy that the healthcare system could use is to focus on the social determinants of health within the community. In America, therefore, the healthcare system could ensure that they focus on addressing the community on how they can take care of themselves, their environment, and their children after birth. The American healthcare systems should focus on ensuring that they have specialists advising the communities on social, economic, and legal services and resources that they need to look at to reduce the chances of contracting diseases (Amanda Merck, 2018).
From the first five chapters of the book “upstream” by Heath, the book is inspiring as it gives out ideas and lessons that one can implement in solving and preventing problems before they happen. The first chapters explain the upstream and downstream and provide examples and deeper explanations of the two concepts and their applications. The chapters inspire different organizations and systems on problem avoidance through the strategy of preventing a problem and therefore help in decision making and problem evaluation. The different examples also help understand the plans and strategies to respond to and handle problems. The book also educates on handling problems from the source rather than dealing with one problem after another each time. The book is inspirational, especially to the influential people in the governments and leaders, as it motivates them to prevent problems from happening. The book opens up our thinking and reduces the cases of problem blindness. Therefore we can agree that the chapters are inspirational as they give us a problem-solving strategy and change our thinking from downstream to upstream. The book helps create a different perspective on the problems we face and encourages us to prevent problems before they happen other than dealing with one problem after another. The book does not specify one field but offers lessons that can be applied to different fields of a profession. Therefore the upstream strategy can be used by all professionals in fields like business, medicine, or politics.
References
Amanda Merck. (2018, October 8). The Upstream-Downstream Parable for Health Equity. Salud America. https://salud-america.org/the-upstream-downstream-parable-for-health-equity/
Heath, D. (2020). Upstream: the quest to solve problems before they happen. Avid Reader Press.
write