Your Health Depends On Where You Live

Bill Davenhall - Your Health Depends On Where You Live

This is the TED talk I have chosen for my health-related blog post. The speaker is Bill Davenhall who shows the importance of environment in our lives. He works in the U.S., where he has been living his entire life, as a Senior Health Adviser at ESRI. The video is filmed in October 2009 and is approximately 9 minutes long. The goal he is trying to accomplish is to include environmental and geographical data and merging them into patient's medical record together with medication and surgery history.

Summary

Having experienced the heart attack few years ago Bill decided to find the culprit of it. He started looking where no other doctor had looked before: environment. Air and toxic gases, that factories are letting out and which we inhale every day are damaging our health. But we do not worry about it because they are insidious. What we cannot see cannot harm us, right? Our body and our health depend highly not only on our lifestyle and genetics, but on the environment as well.  

3 useful phrases from the video

Geo-medicine - this is new branch of the medicine so many people haven't even heard about it yet. It is the branch of medicine that takes the environmental, climatic and topographic* impact into consideration. It uses modern technology to see the connection between the patient's health and the exposure to the places he/she has been. This is happening while the patient is in doctor's office. 

(source: https://www.esri.com/library/ebooks/geomedicine.pdf
  http://medicaldictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Geomedicine)

*topography is earth science, graphic representation of the surface features of a place or region

Intensive care ward - if you would suffer from serious disease like trauma (injury), sepsis or organ failure, you would be put in an intensive care ward. It is a room in hospital separated from the rest of the hospital and there work highly trained doctors and nurses. If you're in emergency department and your condition deteriorates, this would require immediate transport to the intensive care unit.

(source:http://medicaldictionary.thefreedictionary.com/ward

               http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intensive_care_unit)

to recuperate from emergency surgery - if you're recuperating from a surgery it means your recovering, your condition is getting better,  you regain your strength, be on the mend
(source: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/american-english/regain)

What is the takeaway message for me?

I am glad I stumbled upon this topic by accident because this is the topic I really like. What I like about it is that Bill took example from his life, his experience and based on that explained why is the area where you live so important for your health. People always talk about how air is polluted, how others don't recycle and how we should start taking care of the planet. But have doctor's taken this global problems into account? No. I hope that you, dear readers, as well as my friends and family will take environment into account next time you don't feel well or feel something is not the way it should be. This is tightly connected to the environmental problems and pollution and I honestly hope that people will start taking care of the planet because it means taking care of your health as well. 

Presentation skills

The first thing that caught my eye was the introduction. First, he starts with rhetoric question: "Can geographic information make you healthy?" It's interesting because the question is so simple but it really makes you think. And, in my opinion, it is because people never really thought about it or read about it. It continues with metaphor he later explains. He says: "In 2001 I got hit by a train. My train was a heart attack." His entire presentation is accompanied by a very good presentation that makes it easier to understand. He speaks in a normal speed and uses words everyone can understand so his message can be delivered to everyday people and not only experts of this field. He also has few humorous moments and what definitely intrigued the audience to pay attention throughout the presentation.

I hope you enjoyed my post and learned some new words as well as notice some tips for the presentation you thought were irrelevant before. If you want to find out more about geomedicine here is the link to Bill's official website:
http://www.esri.com/industries/health/geomedicine
https://www.esri.com/library/ebooks/geomedicine.pdfHis Twitter:

https://twitter.com/BillDavenhall
And some of his posts in Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-davenhall/