Building Transparency

Transparency, access, and action keep me enthusiastic about the work that we do at our Bree Collaborative. I think often about the barriers put up around accessing knowledge – especially medical knowledge. This includes everything from the way that we write peer-reviewed articles, to the cost of being able to get those articles to read, to the years of education needed to access the jobs supporting our health ecosystem (including clinical care and public health).

Every one of us has a body. We have to ask whether this commodification of knowledge about how to run this body has served us well – has served our community and its members well. While information has certainly gotten easier to access via the internet, we are often so inundated with conflicting sources and facts that we wind up with a good number of us who don’t feel comfortable getting vaccinated. The human mind, given a lack of explanation, will create an explanation that fits with past experience. I think all of us in our health ecosystem have to own the fact that our participation in a system that creates barriers around understanding has helped to build the hesitancy we see around the vaccines that can help to end this pandemic. If we own the problem we can own the solution as well. We owe it to one another to help us understand the why.

Back to transparency and access. This next year Bree has the opportunity to look at moving from guidelines to action in low back pain and to develop community standards for infection control, managing asthma in children and adolescents, and for hepatitis C. Join us as we work to create a system that helps our frail human bodies live the best life that we can.

Ginny Weir, CEO, Foundation for Health Care Quality