Drivers of Health Archive

By Austin Frakt In an illuminating set of conversations on Monday at the Drivers of Health event in Cambridge, a diverse group of experts discussed how health care providers, local policy makers and community groups can work together to provide everyone in society with “a fair and just opportunity to live their healthiest life possible,” as Continue reading [...]

The following is an interview with Kathy Ko Chin, MS, President and CEO of the Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum, a national health justice organization which influences policy, mobilizes communities, and strengthens programs and organizations to improve the health of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders. She’ll be speaking as a panelist at Continue reading [...]

This post, by Harold Pollack, was originally published on September 22, 2012 on The Incidental Economist. It is reposted with permission here. Dr. Pollack is the Helen Ross Professor of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. Over the past decade, he has conducted diverse studies and intervention trials to improve services to vulnerable individuals Continue reading [...]

The following is an interview with Betsey Tilson, MD, MPH, Director and Chief Medical Officer for the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. She’ll be speaking as a panelist at our Cambridge meeting on December 2. Austin Frakt: Among health care systems, plans, and programs, there has been increasing discussion of, if not investment in, Continue reading [...]

By Luke Testa It seems intuitive that providing people with accurate health information will help them make better health decisions. But just providing information backed by research isn’t enough to change minds, let alone behavior. The way people engage with health information is more complicated than just consuming available scientific findings. Beliefs play a major Continue reading [...]

The following is an interview with Daniel Polsky, PhD, MPP, Distinguished Professor of Health Economics at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. Austin Frakt: To what extent should the health system be involved in addressing social needs? After all, these are not traditionally in the purview of health care. Are the boundaries of health Continue reading [...]

The following is an interview with Sandro Galea, PhD, physician, epidemiologist, author, and dean and Robert A. Knox Professor at Boston University School of Public Health. Austin Frakt: Among health care systems, plans, and programs, there has been increasing discussion of, if not investment in, approaches to addressing social needs. What is driving this phenomenon? Continue reading [...]

By Austin Frakt The community of scholars (including some of us on this project) and the health care industry have been using “social determinants of health” to mean so many things that it has lost its original meaning. Sometimes precise definitions don’t matter too much if everyone knows what is meant from context. But I Continue reading [...]

Considering how much money we spend on health care in the U.S., we might hope that we allocate a good chunk of it toward evaluating the impact of the health policies we have in place. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. Austin Frakt explores U.S. health policy evaluation (or lack thereof) in one of his recent Continue reading [...]

By Kate Raphael In other blog posts, we’ve discussed U.S. health care spending and outcomes. In short, we spend a lot more on medical care than other high-income countries, yet our health outcomes are often worse. We also spend a lot of money on social programs, which have been shown to be associated with improved health outcomes. It makes Continue reading [...]