I am an obstetrician and gynecologist, and in 2001, armed with an understanding of how the San Francisco School of Medicine engages the community, from fighting AIDS to guarding the health of its residents, I returned to the Taipei City Renai Hospital as an attending obstetrician and gynecologist, as well as an attending in the Department of Community Medicine, where I frequently traveled to communities filled with elderly people.
At that time, Taipei City began to support medical care in Matsu (Lianjiang County), which gave me the opportunity to serve on all the islands in Matsu. The pap smears and ultrasounds alone allowed me to serve for a long time, because it was rare to find a "female" physician who could make conservative women willing to come out and be examined, so that cancer could be detected early and treated as soon as possible. I feel the value of being a woman physician and community medicine.
In order to take care of my children, and with my husband at the forefront of medical care (Editor's note: my son-in-law, K.C. Wei, is an award-winning neurosurgeon and president of the Taiwan Society of Neuro-Oncology), I left the clinic and went to the Bureau of Disease Control, but I encountered the SARS outbreak of 2003, which accidentally changed my career, and I was able to see Administrator Chien-Jen Chen and Commander-in-Chief Ming-Liang Lee directing the fight against the epidemic, which made me determined to stay on the scene at the public health center. I was determined to stay in the public health field so that everyone could live a normal life without fear. Regardless of SARS, dengue fever vector wars, pandemic influenza preparedness, all infectious disease prevention and treatment should be community carpet epidemic prevention and publicity to change the public's behavior, the only effective public health risk communication hand is to protect the community's health is not the only way.
Since 2018, Taiwan has entered an aging society, with 14% of the population over the age of 65 and more than the young population under 14. We must face the challenge with all our strength and shape the even-healthy Shangri-La, both in the city and in the countryside, to tell our own stories from the point of view of the people in the area, and to solve the needs with creativity.
I asked the Office of the Comptroller General to analyze the top ten causes of death and take stock of the battlefield of disease, and found that the top causes of death have shifted from infectious diseases such as gastritis, duodenitis, enteritis, pneumonia, and tuberculosis in 1952 to malignant tumors, and heart and cerebrovascular disease in 2015. In contrast to the World Health Organization's Global Goals for Sustainable Development, and the need to implement community-based integrated healthcare, vaccine policies, dementia care, and primary care in disadvantaged areas, all point directly to the importance of community-based healthcare, and that community, community, community, is the area where the future of health is both most needed and sorely lacking.
In Taiwan, where there is universal healthcare coverage, everyone enjoys the happiness of high quality healthcare coverage. Sickness or injuries inevitably require healthcare resources, and only by staying healthy and preventing disease can we reduce the consumption of hospital resources and perpetuate the healthcare system.
The focus of community medicine is on early diagnosis of disease, early identification of environmental and occupational hazards, and prevention of disease, unlike traditional medicine, which is based on a smaller vision of personal health and is mostly confined to the hospital's specialized division of labor to provide services. There are four main features:
1. concern for public health and community health
2. emphasis on preventive medicine or primary health care
3. follow people's daily lives, rely on their usual routines and live around their families
4. emphasize the concept of serving people where they are
On the one hand, it is the responsibility of the individual and the family to develop health literacy and even to contribute to their own capabilities. On the other hand, it is a multifaceted cooperation, combining the public and private sectors, forming teams and partnerships, and utilizing the collective power to achieve the ultimate ideal of universal health care.
The future of community medicine: innovation and metamorphosis
The new community medicine will have many new elements, and at least the following is implied in the concept:
1. The community's dynamics must be incorporated, and the community must be involved in planning, organizing, and managing the community's health care. Community refers not only to physical areas, but also to virtualized communities and social networks.
2, community medicine 4.0 is not just looking forward to dancing with the long-term care ****, with the progress of the ICT Internet of Things, telemedicine or intelligent medical technology to provide a new care model. Telemedicine, Telecare, and Telestroke have been quite successful in developing medical models in Europe and the United States.
3. Connotation is not just about personal health, not just about treating the sick, not just about health units, not just about home care, but in the face of the enormous challenges of an aging society, together with the ideas of vitality, aging, health promotion, and mutual self-help to help people, changing the face of community medicine in the physical.
4, social media has completely changed the way of practicing medicine and care provided by the mold frame, especially network 2.0 technology, so that the media medicine and medical relations into a new pattern.
Primary care is so important but has long been neglected, and we hope that the book, "A New Vision for the Community, A New Generation of Health Strategy 4.0," will attract more people to pay attention to and invest in community health.
<This column reflects the opinions of experts and does not represent the position of this organization. >