Healthcare as a cultural change agent in a socially sustainable society begins with the procreative couple many months before their firstborn child.  If healthcare is to fulfill its first priority, then it must address the health concerns of the next generation long before that generation is born.  As a “system,” healthcare must be concerned about the overall health of society.  It may not seem obvious, but a sustainable population is far more easily cared for than a growing population.  A growing population requires an ever larger service delivery system with increased costs.

A socially sustainable society has as its first priority is to sustain the species.  Because of the symbiosis between the individual/family and society, it is the responsibility of society to ensure that the family is an effective enculturating institution that assures the sustainability of its children who will also become parents who support social sustainability.  It is the responsibility of these enculturated children to become effective members of government, corporations, foundations and all organizations to enculturate those organizations with the values, option-development, choice-decisions and decision-actions that support the social sustainability of society.  In this regard, holistic healthcare is an integral system to the larger system of society.  It sets the holistic sustainability standards for the health of individuals/families, societies and all organizations. 

Not so obviously, the sustainable health of a society is inversely proportional to the size of that population.  This was one of the primary dictums of Dr. Albert Allen Bartlett, Professor Emeritus, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado who shared his mantra about over-population for over 40 years.  Is over-population a social problem?  political problem? or an economic/financial problem?  It is all three.  Now, please connect to Dr. Bartlett’s YouTube video.

As you can see, population growth is an immediate concern for healthcare in a socially sustainable society.  Unsustainable population growth, whether by birth or immigration whether legal or illegal, jeopardizes the very existence of that society.  Undisciplined population growth jeopardizes the social sustainability standards of the three values that underwrite long enduring societies and civilizations, the quality of life of each individual, their ability to grow into their potential to make a contribution to society equally as anyone else.  Tomorrow, we will discuss population management.