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Reimagining Diversity and Inclusion: A Pathway to Courageous Conversations

By The SHSMD Team posted 11-02-2021 09:10 AM

  
Derreck Kayongo
Derreck Kayongo
Founder of the Global Soap Project


Who could have imagined that something as simple as “soap” could be so empowering? Well, Derreck Kayongo did just that. Kayongo is an entrepreneur, CNN Hero, and Founder of the Global Soap Project. He recently was a keynote speaker at the SHSMD Connections 2021 annual conference in San Antonio, sharing his session, “Reimagining Diversity and Inclusion: a Pathway to Courageous Conversations.”

His story is inspiring, to say the least.

“It’s a story about a young man who grows up around very innovative parents. And one of the things they do is make soap. He becomes enthralled in the middle of a war, and then he becomes a refugee and sees the power of soap. He gets to go to the U.S. for school, and he sees American hotels throwing away soap. He decides, ‘I'm going to recycle soap to take it back home.’ The adulation and joy of the mothers as he gives them that bar of soap is where the real story is,” shares Kayongo.

However, Kayongo’s story doesn’t end there.

Addressing Healthcare Inequality

Soap is just one small part of a greater problem: healthcare inequality.

“We take our healthcare services and providers for granted. We just assume, okay, when I fall sick, of course they'll be there and they'll take care of me. But, we don't know that they have to deal with a lot to get healthcare delivered as a service,” explains Kayongo. “[The pandemic] heightened this notion of inequality within healthcare and the need for us to actually focus on building systems that allow everybody to acquire healthcare. That means that we have to get our politics right. We have to get social indicators right, our economics right, to cover everybody.”

Kayongo points to leadership as a lacking component in certain global communities. His efforts in supplying his home country with soap is just one part of a greater mission; much more still must be done.

“It's not that Africans can't afford soap and it's not accessible to them, but it's the leadership. When you create an environment of poor leadership, all these institutions that are supposed to be serving the people fail. When those institutions fail, then these very bad things happen, like poor hygiene, lack of clean water.”

How Health Systems Can Support Individuals’ Efforts

One way individuals can contribute to their own health status is to take responsibility for their wellness. Kayongo urges everyone exercise and eat healthfully. This type of preventative care helps mitigate at least some of the inequalities currently persisting within the healthcare industry.

“It's more expensive when you don't take care of yourself initially than when you wait for things to go down the tube. It makes the insurance costs very high. I think if COVID has taught us anything, we all need to be attentive to this idea of health. Because germs don't care about us. Their goal is to eat us. They have an undivided attention in surviving, and the way they survive is by eating us,” he cautions. “So, we should have the same sort of dedication to health, our health, by being very, very tenacious.”

Ultimately, that’s where hospital and health system marketing departments can be so effective. With a strong foundation of an efficient health system in place, marketing can go forth with communications that actively build healthy communities.

“We want marketing to properly communicate all the new medicines and the new technologies that are coming up so that the more we educate the population, the more effective we are in delivering health services. We've got to understand the power of communication, and marketing is part of it.”

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