Grey Swan

I recently canvassed several interns who are working on preventative health measures in D.C. and asked if there was any new ideas being tossed about. They said “No”. This got me thinking – with all the talk about preventing future illness, why are so few ideas tossed about in public? In order to get this ball rolling, I have two such ideas.

 1) Free Sunblock at public beaches, pools, etc. If sunblock is indeed effective at blocking cancer, offering sunblock free might be a good idea. It would displace a large amount of private purchase, but it might also encourage people who forget or are otherwise uninterested to put some on. It could be held in despensers by snack stands where people could not freely refill there bottle, but could freely put it on. If the quantity of money saved from prevented cancer is in the ballpark of the cost of the program (minus the cost savings of people who would otherwise use sunblock), it would be a success.

2) Free earplugs at concerts, clubs, etc. Many studies demonstrate that young adults today have worse hearing than an average fifty year old had only a few decades ago. The accepted reason for this is excessively loud music. In particular, concerts and clubs are both very loud, and very practical venues for free earplug distribution. The idea is that bad hearing can be costly for a number of reasons – increased accidents (not hearing a car coming, etc), hearing aids later in life, etc. While earplugs are currently ‘uncool’ to wear to most outings, providing them free would increase the quantity of people wearing them, which would decrease their ‘uncoolness’. Consequently, a large number of people might protect their hearing, and the message of auditory protection would be heard. Most importantly, earplugs are very cheap to make and could be distributed at a low cost – making this idea much more viable than free sunblock.

 I hope to start a dialog about potential preventative health measures. Surely a detailed cost benefit study of these ideeas is needed, but having ideas to study is an important step.

N.B. I am not suggesting an all encompassing nanny state, but rather that when the public bears the costs but not the benefits of an individuals risky behavior (failing to apply suntan lotion and subsequently contract cancer), there should be room for policy improvement.