In attendance at the September 4, 2024 Salus Health Care Forum were Mitch Applegate, William Bergquist, Jeremy Fish, Bill Gillanders, and Jack Westfall. The Trigger topic for this forum was provided by Mitch Applegate who introduced the concept of mental models and considered the role that mental models play in addressing the challenging issue of high fructose corn syrup’s impact on contemporary health care in the United States.

Following is a narrative based on the dialogue engaged during this Salus Health Care Forum:

Mitch

One of my favorite topics is the concept of Mental Models that has been presented by Peter Senge in his book, The Fifth Discipline. He writes about mental models and Epistemology. Epistemology is about how we know what we know. Are we aware of how we see the world and what we see in the world? Are we aware at any time of the mental models we have in place?  There are two types of mental models. There is the mental model that we espouse. This is the mental model that concerns our mission, our vision. And then there is the mental model that is in place. We are often unaware of this second mental model. I have been fascinated with this distinction. It helps in understanding interpersonal dynamics. There is an ongoing story offered by Senge regarding our mental models that can be grasped and looked at.

Our minds see all sorts of things.  Where do we get these things?  We must challenge ourselves to check our mental models, to recognize that we can take our models out and look at them.  In fact, the highest functioning teams can do that. What is the mental model under which we are actually operating?  Can we take it out and look at it? Can we recognize that if we don’t deal with this model, if we are not aware of this model, then it will limit our outcomes to those that exist within that mental model.

That is my premise in setting up the trigger topic regarding sugar. My mom said 60 years ago: “sugar is bad for you. It makes you hyper.  She was a kindergarten teacher so I’m sure that she knew this to be true.  After the cupcake birthday, the kids were out of control for a while.  Let’s fast forward 50 years. Now there is an epidemic of fatty liver disease. Now, transplants for fatty liver disease that are nonalcoholic based are the primary cause of the need for transplants. When one of our GI specialists counsels someone about fatty liver disease he first talks about avoiding high fructose corn syrup. So, I started getting interested in this topic. It turns out that there is quite a bit of information out there about high fructose corn syrup.  It is really a chemical that is added to food, although we think of it as a food.