Community helps improve people's health

[lpetrich]

The town that’s found a potent cure for illness – community | George Monbiot | Opinion | The Guardian by George Monbiot

Frome in Somerset has seen a dramatic fall in emergency hospital admissions since it began a collective project to combat isolation. There are lessons for the rest of the country

And the rest of the world, also.

It could, if the results stand up, be one of the most dramatic medical breakthroughs of recent decades. It could transform treatment regimes, save lives, and save health services a fortune. Is it a drug? A device? A surgical procedure? No, it’s a newfangled intervention called community. ...

What this provisional data appears to show is that when isolated people who have health problems are supported by community groups and volunteers, the number of emergency admissions to hospital falls spectacularly. ...

Frome is a remarkable place, run by an independent town council famous for its democratic innovation. There’s a buzz of sociability, a sense of common purpose and a creative, exciting atmosphere that make it feel quite different from many English market towns, and for that matter, quite different from the buttoned-down, dreary place I found when I first visited, 30 years ago.

...
So, with the help of the NHS group Health Connections Mendip and the town council, her practice set up a directory of agencies and community groups. This let them see where the gaps were, which they then filled with new groups for people with particular conditions. They employed “health connectors” to help people plan their care, and most interestingly trained voluntary “community connectors” to help their patients find the support they needed.

Then a discussion of some of the science behind it, like immune-system reactions.

Remarkable as Frome’s initial results appear to be, they shouldn’t be surprising. A famous paper published in PLOS Medicine in 2010 reviewed 148 studies, involving 300,000 people, and discovered that those with strong social relationships had a 50% lower chance of death across the average study period (7.5 years) than those with weak connections. “The magnitude of this effect,” the paper reports, “is comparable with quitting smoking.” A celebrated study in 1945 showed that children in orphanages died through lack of human contact. Now we know that the same thing can apply to all of us.

Also for AIDS and cancer.

 

[J842P]

I recall that two of the characteristics of so-called "Blue Zones", i.e., where populations live significantly longer and reach old age in better health, are strong family ties and strong community engagement.

The other characteristics were less smoking, semi-vegetarianism, lots of legumes in the diet, and constant, moderate, physical activity.


So, for example, in Icaria Greece, nearly 1 out of 3 people make it to their 90s and "have about 20 percent lower rates of cancer, 50 percent lower rates of heart disease and almost no dementia."