Millennials' distrust of large, old institutions is no secret. From Uber to renewable energy, millennials have continuously found ways to circumvent more traditional industries and come up with innovative ideas as new solutions.
This same attitude of distrust and the resulting innovation applies to this generation's relationship with health care. 37% of millennials consider current American health care "poor" or "terrible," and many believe that the industry is greedy and puts profits ahead of patient well-being. As a result, millennials move towards their own ideas of health care solutions — an attitude that creates a foundation ripe for research and innovation regarding our health.
This foundation allows millennials to repeatedly break common health myths. Here are a few ways how.
To many millennials, the idea of "health" suggests something institutional — and, as a result, untrustworthy. Instead, many young people gravitate towards the idea of "wellness," which combines physical health with a more holistic sense of mental and full-body well-being. Wellness can come from a variety of sources beyond a local doctor's office, which encourages millennial resistance to common health-related myths.
For instance, a study from Communispace revealed that the millennial generation resists following traditional health care rules and considers wellness as equally important as health. Almost half of the generation considers maintaining work/life balance and having strong relationships with friends and family as being a significant part of health and wellness, which you aren't likely to hear from your local hospital.
Further, only 61% of millennials see a primary care doctor compared with 80% of baby boomers, as they are often disillusioned with traditional health care systems. Instead, millennials rely on personal networks and a wide array of informational resources, products, services, and providers to manage their health and wellness needs.
These wider ideas of what constitutes health and wellness keeps millennials from blindly following what traditional health care systems tell them to do. This certainly opens them up to certain mistakes, but it also makes it easier for them to challenge health myths perpetuated by more traditional institutions.
In keeping with this idea of holistic health, alternative medicine and millennials' "do-it-yourself" attitude when it comes to their health also contribute to the rapid debunking of many health care myths. A lot of the stigma surrounding alternative health care is subsiding, and many young people consider alternative treatments as being as effective as more traditional ones. The Internet is a leading contributor to this mentality; it allows people to learn from experts and other patients for information about home remedies for common ailments.
Part of the reason that the popularity of alternative medicine has given rise to the debunking of common health myths is that a lot of alternative medicine is easily debunked. With increasing millennial interest in these nontraditional remedies, researchers are taking notice and performing clinical studies that show them as being ineffective.
For example, some alternative medicine practitioners claim that St. John's wort is an effective treatment for depression; with the rise in its popularity and due to the fact that improperly treated depression can lead to suicide, it caught researchers' interest. Soon, researchers at 11 academic medical centers debunked the myth for the benefit of thousands of patients. If millennials didn't focus so heavily on the alternative remedy industry, then these myths would be allowed to live on in the shadows, with potential negative ramifications for patients.
This isn't to say that all alternative methods are bunk; otherwise, why would millennials invest so much in them? In fact, increasing interest in this field has given rise to studies that show the clinical potential of previously alternative cures, like folic acid for pregnancy and Vitamin D in postmenopausal women.
There is no health-related industry more distrusted by the millennial generation than "Big Pharma." Seen as dishonest and greedy, the pharmaceutical industry has been ranked as the least-trusted health information resource by people aged 18-34. This distrust has pushed millennials to pursue more options, debunking the common myth that traditional pharmaceuticals are always the best way to treat ailments. It isn't that millennials toss aside prescriptions entirely; however, they do seek out more solutions to deal with health-related issues.
The increasing popularity of PatchMD is an example of this. Due to the discovery that everyday pills leave behind fillers and binders that can affect our digestive systems, as well as pills having only about a 10% absorption rate of the active ingredient, Dr. Dennis Shepherd developed a patch to deliver medicine through the skin. Patients receive 60-70% of the active ingredients, and there's no effect on the digestive system — which may be why this innovation has been used by prestigious medical facilities like Johns Hopkins, Stanford University, and UCLA.
Basically, through the millennial push to avoid traditional pharmaceutical methods, innovators are debunking previously held myths about the best methods of medicine delivery.
Through moving away from more traditional health care methods, millennials are facilitating the next wave of health myth scrutiny. How could you bring in this scrutiny when working with millennial audiences?
Deep Patel is a serial entrepreneur, marketer and the author of A Paperboy's Fable: The 11 Principles of Success.