Northwell CEO Emeritus Described Mixed State Of Healthcare In Presentation

LONG ISLAND, NY. — Northwell Health CEO Emeritus Michael Dowling gave a presentation before the Long Island Regional Planning Council Thursday entitled, “Forces Remaking Healthcare,” in which the former Northwell executive and Mario Cuomo aide laid out some of the challenges and opportunities facing healthcare professionals today.

Dowling spent over 35 years in public health after earning his masters degree from Fordham, including 12 years in state government and 23 years as president and CEO at Northwell. In his role overseeing the healthcare giant he presided over 28 hospitals and over 1,000 outpatient facilities. He stepped down from his role in May.

The administrator said that recent changes in federal policy have made for an uncertain future for healthcare professionals, citing the reduction of research funding and changes in vaccine policy as causes of concern. With all of that said, the opening message he conveyed was one of optimism.

“I remind people of this most of the time when I do public speaking, just to recall the unbelievable, dramatic advances that have occurred in healthcare the last 50 years. It is pretty extraordinary, and the United States has led the world in many of these. And many of us are the beneficiaries of many of those advances,” Dowling said. “It's important to keep this in mind, especially as people sometimes have this negative instinct, where everything is negative and they forget all of the things that have been happening that have been absolutely wonderful. It is hard to look at any area of healthcare today that has not been dramatically improved from where it was 50 years ago.”

With that said, Dowling noted that it isn’t all roses in healthcare right now, even with as far as the industry has come. Among the biggest threats to public health, Dowling said, are changes in vaccine doctrine coming out of Washington, declines in vaccination rates and subsequent outbreaks in diseases once rendered obsolete. Just this week, CBS reported that the CDC would end its universal recommendation for babies to be vaccinated against hepatitis B, while a measles outbreak spread in South Carolina.

“If you read the New York Times the other day, you know about the mini-epidemic of measles in South Carolina. You know, 15, 20 years ago, we declared that measles was over with. These things are coming back. And the new changes around hepatitis, the reductions in vaccination rates, all of these will have a negative effect for quite a while,” Dowling said. “But as those negative impacts begin to show their faces, it's going to result in people wanting to turn the page and turn the clock forward again. So I think we're in a difficult time, but it's not a time to become utterly pessimistic. It's a time to take advantage of the opportunity given by optimism.”

On a separate note, Dowling said mental health could become an area of concern, particularly as the number of people born and raised under an age of social media access grows with each passing year.

“We have a horrific mental health issue, especially among children. We have never seen anything like the growing of anxiety, depression, and suicide among kids. We have a big suicide prevention program at Northwell, we've had to double the size of it recently. We take care of college kids that want to commit suicide. It's a big program, we’ve doubled the size of it,” Dowling said. “And that all connects back to another area that I believe that we need to pay a lot more attention to as a health issue, and that is the health ill-effects of social media. Social media is a poison and when it's inappropriately used. And there is a direct relation between the global anxiety, depression and suicide of kids and the addiction to social media. We, in many of our programs, have taken care of six, seven, and eight year old kids, suffering from addiction to social media. I hope to hold a big forum in Manhattan next year highlighting that social media is a health issue, as its effect on kids as a health issue.”

While social media and its impact on mental health isn’t the only rising issue Dowling said will become a priority for the healthcare industry in the coming years, the former Northwell executive did say that a way forward could involve broadening the industry’s horizons on things as fundamental as what “health” means.

“And this is why I think all of us have to be looking…to broaden our definition of health,” Dowling said, referring to the impacts social media has had on mental health in kids and young adults. “This is why issues like gun violence, issues like nutrition, and issues like social media, these are all health issues that we've got to pay a lot more attention to. It is not only what doctors and nurses do, providing medical care delivery. Health is affected by everything.”