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In September, 2000, the Editor and Publisher of the Examiner invited SETMA to write a weekly column on
health. The name, Your Life Your Health, was chosen because it emphasizes the individual's responsibility
for their own health and wellness. In 1995, SETMA's founders determined that the healthcare paradigm, where
the physician was the "constable attempting to impose health upon an unwilling and sometimes unwitting
patient," would be replaced with the physician and nurse practitioner as consultant, as colleague, to the patient.
The consultant's responsibility would be to help the patient achieve the health he or she had determined to have.
The patient's responsibility would be to learn and to practice what he or she learned.
In this new model of healthcare, knowledge and information would be critical. Adopting the famous quote
of the founder of the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, Massachusetts -- "The diabetic who knows the most will
live the longest" -- SETMA has determined to help patients learn as much as they can about their own health. It
is our belief that those who know the most will live the "wellest" and the longest.
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