Learning to be a vegan ally In the past, I never thought that a different eating style could make someone vulnerable in a modern society. I never thought that being vegan could mean treatment from others that negatively impacts their wellbeing and health. I am an international student on my first Master of Social Work placement where I am working on two projects: The Vegan Wellbeing Project and Prescribing Nature . Both projects have made me look vegans and vegetarians differently. The placement has also reminded me of a previous experience, and stories shared by my relatives.
Self-management of chronic health conditions is a daily and dynamic approach that individuals collaborate with family, community and health experts in order to manage lifestyle, symptoms, treatments, and the impact of chronic health problems.
Before listening the online lecture, I used to identify the most suitable treatment to improve chronic disease is a constant intake of medicine and a regular health examination. I totally ignored other important factors that have potential and considerable influences on chronic health conditions, such as lifestyle, social support, and personal health beliefs. These factors significantly affect the improvement of chronic health conditions and the possibility of causing other health complications. I suppose that it is necessary to adjust our mindset and attitude while facing chronic diseases. This is due to the fact that it is rare to recover completely from chronic diseases, which means that individuals have to face and live with the chronic disease in the rest of their lives.
For instance, patients with diabetes have to pay more attention to the ingredients of food in daily life, sometimes they even need to rely on insulin analog before or after having meal to control their health conditions. Also, it is recommended to avoid sedentary lifestyle and do regular exercise. These changes considerably impacts their lifestyle. Thus, it seems that changing attitude towards chronic health conditions and gradually changing the way to treat chronic diseases is one main part of self-management.
Who has the Power?
Biomedical model has a powerful role in chronic health conditions. In modern societies, it is common to put emphasis on lifespan extension by providing surgery and prescribing medicine. This is the reason why the increasing number of aging population and chronic diseases these years. However, in my perspective, it is equally essential to check patients’ mental health conditions and their social, economic, environmental contexts. If simply focus on symptoms and prescribe medicine without discussion of patients’ surrounding living contexts, it might lead to a higher possibility of other health complications. This will also negatively affects self-management and subsequently impacts the improvement of chronic diseases.
For example, if patients with diabetes are only provided with related medicine, they would have inadequate information about self-management. Without considering and discussing with health professionals, how can they completely understand their health conditions and change their lifestyle that better to their health? How can they know the way to change daily diet if they live in an extended family? Therefore, before implementing self-management plan successfully, it is important to discuss about the effect of social determinants on chronic health conditions with professionals.
The power also lies on individuals. I think that individuals have the most influential power in chronic health condition. After inquiry with health professional and positive social support, the patient has right to make the last decision to follow self-management plan or not. If person with chronic diseases is unwilling to make any change to his or her lifestyle, it is challenging to improve health conditions. I always believe that individuals need to take responsibility to their health conditions within supportive social and environmental contexts. Although medicine is one main solution to improve the conditions, changing the lifestyle with health professionals’ advice is also a complementary and important solution.
Being a social worker, I will view myself as a partner in cooperation with clients and health experts. Within health system, staff might focus on the effectiveness of interrogation and prescription. Thus, social workers can offer additional consultation for those who confused about how to design and maintain self-management plan to assist them promote adherence. During this process, I also need to understand and consider clients’ social support, environmental, financial and political contexts in order to make the most appropriate self-management plan for each client.
Social work perspectives
As for future social work practice, on a personal level, I will understand the client’s chronic health conditions and social, economic, environmental, and political contexts first, and then provide suggestions about self-management. In addition, encouraging the client to actively and collaboratively engage in health care process is another fundamental task. In order to motivate the participation, I can provide positive and supportive feedback to the client’s improvement, which may help increase their confidence on control of chronic diseases and lead to long-term self-management. I will also recommend patients’ family come to consult together. This not only makes me more understand the client, but also can promote the importance of social support from family. It will also offer more objective view about the practical implementation of self-management. These all have positive impact on the improvement of chronic diseases.
On a meso level, promoting the importance of self-management and social support is essential. When everyone has basic knowledge of chronic diseases and understand the value of social support, the tolerant and supportive community would be established. Patients with chronic diseases would feel supportive while following self-management plan. Positive and sympathetic community could give patients encouragement to face chronic diseases. On macro level, with consent of patients, sharing their feelings about consultation with health professionals within biomedical model and their experiences of self-management for chronic diseases may contribute to changes of treatment methods in health system.
Author’s note
Glad to hear different opinions and perspectives. Please make a comment and open some discussion.
Learning to be a vegan ally
