Population health, public health, social determinants of health, healthcare equity, and other terms are often used in the healthcare realm but may be confusing to those unfamiliar with health terms. Population health and public health can be especially easy to confuse. Public health, as the CDC explains, prioritizes bettering community health via policies, education, outreach, and research. The CDC differentiates this from population health because population health is centered around healthcare entities collaborating to improve community health outcomes.

What does that definition of population health actually look like in today’s American healthcare system, and how is it evolving to become increasingly important?

On today’s episode of Healthcare Rethink, Host Brian Urban speaks with Dr. David Nash, Founding Dean Emeritus, Jefferson College of Population Health, to provide context on who Banner Health is and how they are involved in the payer-provider relationship in healthcare.

Urban and Dr. Nash also discussed…

Dr. Nash’s journey from an Economics major to medical school to his current leadership roles in medicine
How analytics, population health, and other topics can be prioritized in healthcare
Transformative health leaders and how they have influenced healthcare’s approach to population health

Dr. Nash explained how there is much improvement that can be made in medical education, but why there is such a barrier. “There’s a lot we can learn from, ‘Are we training the right doctor, nurse, pharmacist, social worker for the future?’ I would argue there’s a long way to go here, a lot of opportunity for improvement. Let’s start with quality and safety, human factors engineering, epidemiology, understanding the social determinants, all that stuff…here’s the model: American medical education, nursing education, all the rest—it’s like a barge in the river. And medical education is weighted down by lots of stuff, and you can’t put more stuff on the barge unless you take stuff off the barge. So, I don’t believe in that description, but that is the reality.”

Dr. David Nash is Founding Dean Emeritus of Jefferson College of Population Health and Dr. Raymond C. and Doris N. Grandon Professor of Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University. He earned his BA in Economics from Vassar College, his MD from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, and his MBA from The Wharton School. Dr. Nash is a board-certified internist, has held a variety of governance positions, and has earned a variety of accolades including the Philadelphia Business Journal Healthcare Heroes Award and honorary distinguished fellow of the American College of Physician Executives.

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