By Michael J. Critelli | MakeUsWell Newsletter, 

I was recently at a book launch celebrating the life and work of Kevin Speier, a man whose battle with cancer was as much about dignity and resilience as it was about medicine. Kevin passed away in 2017 after a horrific battle with oral cancer. Our son Michael A. Critelli and daughter-in-law Jill Mamey Critelli created two books, Lemons and Ladybugs and Lemons and Ladybugs II. The latter book was the subject of the book launch.

Objective observers have rated both books exceptional. They touch on a number of subjects: how a man who died at age 33 and battled not only the cancer at the end of his life but also various kinds of addiction as an adult still managed to have profound and different effects on those whom he touched in his life (more thoroughly covered in the first book), the challenges and surprising joys of caregiving (his widow Angelina’s Facebook posts are included in both books), and the way he inspired everyone, including the co-authors, to think more positively about the transition from life to death.

Kevin was trained as a nurse. He understood the clinical system from the inside. Yet oral cancer forced him into a position few of us imagine ourselves occupying: he required special feeding because swallowing, something most of us do without a second thought, became difficult and dangerous.

Watching people reflect on Kevin’s life, I was struck by how invisible that challenge is to those who have not faced it. Swallowing is one of those human functions we only notice when it fails. But once it does, everything changes: eating becomes work, nutrition becomes fragile, social rituals fall away, and autonomy quietly erodes.

What stayed with me was not just Kevin’s courage, but what his experience reveals about how poorly designed many everyday systems already are and how solutions created for people with the fewest physical reserves often improve life for everyone else.

People with difficulty swallowing, whether from cancer, stroke, neurological disease, or aging, force us to confront assumptions embedded in food, medication, and care. We assume people can chew, coordinate, swallow safely, and tolerate inconsistent textures. We assume pills can be large, dry, or sharp-edged. We assume hydration will take care of itself. For most of us, those assumptions hold until they don’t.

The solutions developed for dysphagia (the medical term for difficulty swallowing foods or liquids) are not exotic. They involve controlled textures, predictable viscosity, easier-to-swallow nutrition, alternative medication forms, and delivery systems that reduce effort and risk. What’s striking is how broadly beneficial these changes are once we see them clearly.

Uniform textures reduce choking risk for everyone. Easier-to-swallow medications improve adherence far beyond clinical populations. Nutrition that is dense, digestible, and gentle on the body matters not only to cancer patients but also to older adults, children, people under stress, and anyone recovering from illness. 

Even hydration, often neglected, improves when liquids are designed to be easier to consume. Think about it: a generation ago, we needed drinking fountains or taps to have clean drinking water conveniently available to us. Plastic bottles are ubiquitous but pose health risks because of the microplastics they contain. But today we have convenient metallic containers that keep water cold and clean and enable us to have it at any time and place. The delivery systems for foods and beverages are a vital factor in enhancing nutrition.

This is a recurring pattern in human-centered design. Curb cuts were created for wheelchairs and ended up benefiting parents with strollers, travelers with luggage, and cyclists Closed captions were designed for the deaf and now serve people in noisy gyms, offices, and airports.  Solutions that make swallowing easier belong in that same category.

Kevin Speier’s experience underscores a deeper truth: many health failures are not failures of motivation or discipline. They are failures of capability matching. When systems demand more coordination, strength, or tolerance than people can reliably supply, especially under stress, they quietly break down.

Designing for those at the margins is not about lowering standards. It is about building systems that respect human variability. When we do that well, dignity increases, errors decrease, and outcomes improve for everyone.

Kevin’s life, and the care adaptations his illness required, are a reminder that the most humane solutions are often the most scalable ones. When we make the hard things easier for the most vulnerable among us, we often discover we’ve made life better for the rest of us too.