How To Get Great Health Care Ideas On — And Around — The Table
Hello, nice to meet you. Let’s get uncomfortable together.
That’s not exactly the pitch that Michael Hebb uses when he first meets people, or when he gets in front of crowds for TED Talks and other thought leader conversations. But Hebb has invested much of the past two decades in getting people to sit down for dinners and have long, winding conversations about the ideas that matter to them, and to society as a whole.
It’s what led to Hebb’s most noteworthy creation — the Let’s Have Dinner And Talk About Death social movement — and has helped him become a leading thinker about how people can make great progress in advancing ideas by gathering around a table.
At Hebb’s recent Vital Signs lecture for the Dell Medical School he spoke frankly about his own avoidance as a child of facing his father’s decline due to Alzheimer’s Disease, and how that severely stunted their relationship prior to his father’s passing.
That characteristic is rampant in American culture and keeps many people from speaking openly about most health care issues, since most medical world discussions in some way are connected to mortality.
Hebb’s death talks were the end of a years-long quest for the former architecture student to advance or reinvent the table, one of the simplest and utilitarian creations in human existence.
Rather than change the form, Hebb decided he wanted to “scale the table” and find a way to multiply the positive things like memories, conversations and human bonding between strangers that occur when we gather around a flat surface with food and beverages present.
There are some things to think about from Hebb’s work that can be put to use in Austin as the city deals with a multitude of issues focused around changing rapidly and welcoming thousands of newcomers as residents every year.
We’ll leave things like transportation and housing affordability to other leaders for now, but in the world of health care there are more than a dozen topics and ideas that could serve as perfect fodder for “table talk” sessions with citizens, leaders and health care providers.
Some of them could be largely informational, identifying and breaking down the misconceptions in the community about what opening a new medical school means — or doesn’t mean — to the city as a whole. Or looking at why certain populations have been chronically underserved by health care resources and providers, and how those gaps can be closed.
And what if we concentrate the brainpower, like Hebb showed in highlighting the ideas and movements that came from salon gatherings around the table of Gertrude Stein, or his own gatherings with Gore Vidal? What might happen in the world of health care research, delivery or even billing and payment methods if we got the best of the best from those fields in Central Texas together for a great meal and just the right number of glasses of wine?
There is no doubt that great leaps in health care will be made with the research capabilities that the medical school and prospective new companies like Merck bring to bear for Austin as a whole.
But Hebb tells us that a dedicated program to bring the people of Austin together around tables in a respectful and collegial atmosphere could open up grand new doors when it comes to big ideas and the ways that the city — which is increasingly a melting pot — can create a new identity.
Whether it’s a big question like death and how we treat dying, or any of a limitless number of social and personal matters Hebb’s work shows us the power of sitting together, opening up and sharing what’s on our minds.
