Sonny Patel, MPH candidate
Amid the ongoing dramatic and varied problems in the Middle East, the issue of health care in the region is often largely ignored. However, two students are seeking to blaze the trail in this vital, yet woefully underrepresented, area.
Luke Manley and I recently spent a month in Istanbul intensively researching the current transition of the Turkish health care system from one that is mainly public, community-based, socialized medicine to a more private scheme, reminiscent of the health care “system” in the United States. During our stay, Luke and I conducted 12 official interviews with health practitioners from across the range of occupations (e.g., health officers, medical directors, pharmacists, clinical psychologists, and herbal practitioners) working in each of the major divisions of health care provision (private, public, public-private). Such an immersion in the culture left both of us with an even greater respect for the immense complexity of balancing all of the different aspects of health care development and provision, especially in such a distinctive and complicated society. Further reflecting on our journey, it is apparent that modern Turkey presents a wonderful challenge for research, especially in health care, as its culture, geographical location, and uniquely secular political society highlight the current struggle to simultaneously “Westernize” without losing the old Ottoman values of community and cooperation.
Our preliminary data indicate that this current transition marks an intense period of change for the government, business, and the people of the country. Strong and informed opinions seem to dominate all sides of the evolution of health care in Turkey, and both of us hope to be able to conduct further research in Istanbul, as well as the other major regions of Turkey in the near future. Currently we are in the process of analyzing and organizing our data for a number of presentations with the intent of publishing a paper on the subject later this year.