What makes us get sick? Look upstream | Rishi Manchanda

215,653 views ・ 2014-09-15

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For over a decade as a doctor,
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I've cared for homeless veterans,
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for working-class families.
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I've cared for people who live and work in conditions
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that can be hard, if not harsh,
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and that work has led me to believe
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that we need a fundamentally different way
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of looking at healthcare.
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We simply need a healthcare system
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that moves beyond just looking at the symptoms
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that bring people into clinics,
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but instead actually is able to look
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and improve health where it begins.
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And where health begins
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is not in the four walls of a doctor's office,
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but where we live
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and where we work,
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where we eat, sleep, learn and play,
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where we spend the majority of our lives.
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So what does this different approach to healthcare look like,
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an approach that can improve health where it begins?
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To illustrate this, I'll tell you about Veronica.
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Veronica was the 17th patient
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out of my 26-patient day
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at that clinic in South Central Los Angeles.
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She came into our clinic with a chronic headache.
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This headache had been going on
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for a number of years, and this particular episode
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was very, very troubling.
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In fact, three weeks before she came to visit us
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for the first time, she went to an emergency room in Los Angeles.
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The emergency room doctors said,
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"We've run some tests, Veronica.
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The results are normal, so here's some pain medication,
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and follow up with a primary care doctor,
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but if the pain persists or if it worsens,
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then come on back."
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Veronica followed those standard instructions
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and she went back.
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She went back not just once, but twice more.
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In the three weeks before Veronica met us,
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she went to the emergency room three times.
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She went back and forth,
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in and out of hospitals and clinics,
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just like she had done in years past,
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trying to seek relief but still coming up short.
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Veronica came to our clinic,
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and despite all these encounters with healthcare professionals,
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Veronica was still sick.
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When she came to our clinic, though, we tried a different approach.
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Our approach started with our medical assistant,
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someone who had a GED-level training
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but knew the community.
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Our medical assistant asked some routine questions.
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She asked, "What's your chief complaint?"
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"Headache."
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"Let's get your vital signs" —
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measure your blood pressure and your heart rate,
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but let's also ask something equally as vital
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to Veronica and a lot of patients like her
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in South Los Angeles.
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"Veronica, can you tell me about where you live?
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Specifically, about your housing conditions?
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Do you have mold? Do you have water leaks?
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Do you have roaches in your home?"
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Turns out, Veronica said yes to three of those things:
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roaches, water leaks, mold.
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I received that chart in hand, reviewed it,
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and I turned the handle on the door
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and I entered the room.
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You should understand that Veronica,
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like a lot of patients that I have the privilege of caring for,
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is a dignified person, a formidable presence,
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a personality that's larger than life,
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but here she was
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doubled over in pain sitting on my exam table.
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Her head, clearly throbbing, was resting in her hands.
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She lifted her head up,
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and I saw her face, said hello,
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and then I immediately noticed something
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across the bridge of her nose,
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a crease in her skin.
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In medicine, we call that crease the allergic salute.
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It's usually seen among children who have chronic allergies.
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It comes from chronically rubbing one's nose up and down,
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trying to get rid of those allergy symptoms,
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and yet, here was Veronica, a grown woman,
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with the same telltale sign of allergies.
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A few minutes later, in asking Veronica some questions,
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and examining her and listening to her,
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I said, "Veronica, I think I know what you have.
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I think you have chronic allergies,
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and I think you have migraine headaches and some sinus congestion,
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and I think all of those are related to where you live."
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She looked a little bit relieved,
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because for the first time, she had a diagnosis,
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but I said, "Veronica, now let's talk about your treatment.
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We're going to order some medications for your symptoms,
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but I also want to refer you to a specialist, if that's okay."
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Now, specialists are a little hard to find
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in South Central Los Angeles,
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so she gave me this look, like, "Really?"
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And I said, "Veronica, actually, the specialist I'm talking about
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is someone I call a community health worker,
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someone who, if it's okay with you,
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can come to your home
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and try to understand what's going on
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with those water leaks and that mold,
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trying to help you manage those conditions in your housing that I think are causing your symptoms,
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and if required, that specialist might refer you
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to another specialist that we call a public interest lawyer,
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because it might be that your landlord
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isn't making the fixes he's required to make."
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Veronica came back in a few months later.
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She agreed to all of those treatment plans.
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She told us that her symptoms had improved by 90 percent.
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She was spending more time at work
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and with her family and less time
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shuttling back and forth between the emergency rooms of Los Angeles.
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Veronica had improved remarkably.
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Her sons, one of whom had asthma,
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were no longer as sick as they used to be.
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She had gotten better, and not coincidentally,
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Veronica's home was better too.
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What was it about this different approach we tried
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that led to better care,
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fewer visits to the E.R., better health?
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Well, quite simply, it started with that question:
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"Veronica, where do you live?"
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But more importantly, it was that we put in place
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a system that allowed us to routinely ask questions
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to Veronica and hundreds more like her
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about the conditions that mattered
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in her community, about where health,
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and unfortunately sometimes illness, do begin
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in places like South L.A.
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In that community, substandard housing
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and food insecurity are the major conditions
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that we as a clinic had to be aware of,
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but in other communities it could be
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transportation barriers, obesity,
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access to parks, gun violence.
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The important thing is, we put in place a system
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that worked,
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and it's an approach that I call an upstream approach.
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It's a term many of you are familiar with.
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It comes from a parable that's very common
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in the public health community.
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This is a parable of three friends.
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Imagine that you're one of these three friends
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who come to a river.
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It's a beautiful scene, but it's shattered by the cries of a child,
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and actually several children, in need of rescue in the water.
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So you do hopefully what everybody would do.
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You jump right in along with your friends.
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The first friend says, I'm going to rescue those
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who are about to drown,
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those at most risk of falling over the waterfall.
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The second friends says, I'm going to build a raft.
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I'm going to make sure that fewer people
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need to end up at the waterfall's edge.
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Let's usher more people to safety
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by building this raft,
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coordinating those branches together.
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Over time, they're successful, but not really,
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as much as they want to be.
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More people slip through, and they finally look up
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and they see that their third friend
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is nowhere to be seen.
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They finally spot her.
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She's in the water. She's swimming away from them
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upstream, rescuing children as she goes,
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and they shout to her, "Where are you going?
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There are children here to save."
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And she says back,
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"I'm going to find out
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who or what is throwing these children in the water."
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In healthcare, we have that first friend —
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we have the specialist,
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we have the trauma surgeon, the ICU nurse,
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the E.R. doctors.
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We have those people that are vital rescuers,
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people you want to be there when you're in dire straits.
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We also know that we have the second friend —
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we have that raft-builder.
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That's the primary care clinician,
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people on the care team who are there
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to manage your chronic conditions,
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your diabetes, your hypertension,
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there to give you your annual checkups,
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there to make sure your vaccines are up to date,
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but also there to make sure that you have
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a raft to sit on and usher yourself to safety.
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But while that's also vital and very necessary,
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what we're missing is that third friend.
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We don't have enough of that upstreamist.
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The upstreamists are the health care professionals
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who know that health does begin
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where we live and work and play,
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but beyond that awareness, is able to mobilize
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the resources to create the system
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in their clinics and in their hospitals
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that really does start to approach that,
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to connect people to the resources they need
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outside the four walls of the clinic.
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Now you might ask, and it's a very obvious question
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that a lot of colleagues in medicine ask:
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"Doctors and nurses thinking about transportation and housing?
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Shouldn't we just provide pills and procedures
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and just make sure we focus on the task at hand?"
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Certainly, rescuing people at the water's edge
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is important enough work.
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Who has the time?
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I would argue, though, that if we were to use science as our guide,
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that we would find an upstream approach is absolutely necessary.
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Scientists now know that
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the living and working conditions that we all
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are part of
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have more than twice the impact on our health
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than does our genetic code,
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and living and working conditions,
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the structures of our environments,
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the ways in which our social fabric is woven together,
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and the impact those have on our behaviors,
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all together, those have more than five times
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the impact on our health
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than do all the pills and procedures
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administered by doctors and hospitals combined.
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All together, living and working conditions
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account for 60 percent of preventable death.
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Let me give you an example of what this feels like.
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Let's say there was a company, a tech startup
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that came to you and said, "We have a great product.
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It's going to lower your risk of death from heart disease."
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Now, you might be likely to invest
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if that product was a drug or a device,
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but what if that product was a park?
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A study in the U.K.,
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a landmark study that reviewed the records
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of over 40 million residents in the U.K.,
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looked at several variables,
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controlled for a lot of factors, and found that
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when trying to adjust the risk of heart disease,
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one's exposure to green space was a powerful influence.
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The closer you were to green space,
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to parks and trees,
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the lower your chance of heart disease,
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and that stayed true for rich and for poor.
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That study illustrates what my friends in public health
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often say these days:
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that one's zip code matters more
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than your genetic code.
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We're also learning that zip code
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is actually shaping our genetic code.
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The science of epigenetics looks at those molecular mechanisms,
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those intricate ways in which our DNA is literally shaped,
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genes turned on and off
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based on the exposures to the environment,
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to where we live and to where we work.
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So it's clear that these factors,
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these upstream issues, do matter.
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They matter to our health,
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and therefore our healthcare professionals should do something about it.
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And yet, Veronica asked me
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perhaps the most compelling question
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I've been asked in a long time.
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In that follow-up visit, she said,
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"Why did none of my doctors
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ask about my home before?
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In those visits to the emergency room,
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I had two CAT scans,
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I had a needle placed in the lower part of my back
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to collect spinal fluid,
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I had nearly a dozen blood tests.
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I went back and forth, I saw all sorts of people in healthcare,
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and no one asked about my home."
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The honest answer is that in healthcare,
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we often treat symptoms without addressing
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the conditions that make you sick in the first place.
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And there are many reasons for that, but the big three
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are first, we don't pay for that.
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In healthcare, we often pay for volume and not value.
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We pay doctors and hospitals usually
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for the number of services they provide,
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but not necessarily on how healthy they make you.
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That leads to a second phenomenon that I call
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the "don't ask, don't tell" approach
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to upstream issues in healthcare.
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We don't ask about where you live and where you work,
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because if there's a problem there,
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we don't know what to tell you.
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It's not that doctors don't know these are important issues.
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In a recent survey done in the U.S. among physicians,
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over 1,000 physicians,
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80 percent of them actually said that
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they know that their patients' upstream problems
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are as important as their health issues,
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as their medical problems,
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11:24
and yet despite that widespread awareness
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11:26
of the importance of upstream issues,
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11:28
only one in five doctors said they had
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11:30
any sense of confidence to address those issues,
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11:33
to improve health where it begins.
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11:35
There's this gap between knowing
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11:36
that patients' lives, the context of where they live and work,
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11:39
matters, and the ability to do something about it
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11:42
in the systems in which we work.
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11:43
This is a huge problem right now,
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2334
11:46
because it leads them to this next question, which is,
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11:48
whose responsibility is it?
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11:49
And that brings me to that third point,
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11:51
that third answer to Veronica's compelling question.
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11:54
Part of the reason that we have this conundrum
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11:56
is because there are not nearly enough upstreamists
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12:00
in the healthcare system.
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12:02
There are not nearly enough of that third friend,
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12:04
that person who is going to find out
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12:05
who or what is throwing those kids in the water.
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12:08
Now, there are many upstreamists,
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12:10
and I've had the privilege of meeting many of them,
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12:12
in Los Angeles and in other parts of the country
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2627
12:15
and around the world,
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12:17
and it's important to note that upstreamists
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12:19
sometimes are doctors, but they need not be.
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2537
12:22
They can be nurses, other clinicians,
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2193
12:24
care managers, social workers.
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2008
12:26
It's not so important what specific degree
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1952
12:28
upstreamists have at the end of their name.
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12:30
What's more important is that they all seem
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12:32
to share the same ability to implement a process
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12:36
that transforms their assistance,
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12:38
transforms the way they practice medicine.
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12:40
That process is a quite simple process.
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12:42
It's one, two and three.
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2373
12:44
First, they sit down and they say,
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1651
12:46
let's identify the clinical problem
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2024
12:48
among a certain set of patients.
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1343
12:49
Let's say, for instance,
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1743
12:51
let's try to help children
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1934
12:53
who are bouncing in and out of the hospital
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1804
12:55
with asthma.
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2082
12:57
After identifying the problem, they then move on to that second step,
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2511
12:59
and they say, let's identify the root cause.
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2739
13:02
Now, a root cause analysis, in healthcare,
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3791
13:06
usually says, well, let's look at your genes,
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1715
13:07
let's look at how you're behaving.
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2458
13:10
Maybe you're not eating healthy enough.
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13:12
Eat healthier.
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1016
13:13
It's a pretty simplistic
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1395
13:14
approach to root cause analyses.
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1406
13:16
It turns out, it doesn't really work
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13:17
when we just limit ourselves that worldview.
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2464
13:20
The root cause analysis that an upstreamist brings
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2101
13:22
to the table is to say, let's look at the living
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1937
13:24
and the working conditions in your life.
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3352
13:27
Perhaps, for children with asthma,
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2082
13:29
it's what's happening in their home,
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1608
13:31
or perhaps they live close to a freeway with major air pollution
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2936
13:34
that triggers their asthma.
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1824
13:36
And perhaps that's what we should mobilize our resources to address,
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13:38
because that third element, that third part of the process,
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2373
13:41
is that next critical part of what upstreamists do.
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2531
13:43
They mobilize the resources to create a solution,
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2239
13:45
both within the clinical system,
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1721
13:47
and then by bringing in people from public health,
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2336
13:50
from other sectors, lawyers,
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1342
13:51
whoever is willing to play ball,
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1947
13:53
let's bring in to create a solution that makes sense,
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2083
13:55
to take those patients who actually have clinical problems
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2810
13:58
and address their root causes together
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2183
14:00
by linking them to the resources you need.
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2542
14:02
It's clear to me that there are so many stories
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14:04
of upstreamists who are doing remarkable things.
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2486
14:07
The problem is that there's just not nearly enough of them out there.
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2660
14:09
By some estimates, we need one upstreamist
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14:12
for every 20 to 30 clinicians in the healthcare system.
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2946
14:15
In the U.S., for instance, that would mean
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1255
14:16
that we need 25,000 upstreamists
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2096
14:18
by the year 2020.
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3467
14:22
But we only have a few thousand upstreamists out there right now, by all accounts,
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4110
14:26
and that's why, a few years ago, my colleagues and I
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2553
14:28
said, you know what, we need to train
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1917
14:30
and make more upstreamists.
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1973
14:32
So we decided to start an organization
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1706
14:34
called Health Begins,
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2218
14:36
and Health Begins simply does that:
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1746
14:38
We train upstreamists.
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960
14:39
And there are a lot of measures that we use for our success,
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1938
14:41
but the main thing that we're interested in
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1361
14:42
is making sure that we're changing
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1912
14:44
the sense of confidence,
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1539
14:46
that "don't ask, don't tell" metric among clinicians.
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1905
14:48
We're trying to make sure that clinicians,
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2299
14:50
and therefore their systems that they work in
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1940
14:52
have the ability, the confidence
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2295
14:54
to address the problems in the living
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2675
14:57
and working conditions in our lives.
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3007
15:00
We're seeing nearly a tripling
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1979
15:02
of that confidence in our work.
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1581
15:03
It's remarkable,
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1303
15:05
but I'll tell you the most compelling part
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1914
15:07
of what it means to be working
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1569
15:08
with upstreamists to gather them together.
402
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4483
15:13
What is most compelling is that every day,
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2323
15:15
every week, I hear stories just like Veronica's.
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3771
15:19
There are stories out there of Veronica
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2478
15:21
and many more like her,
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1919
15:23
people who are coming to the healthcare system
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1881
15:25
and getting a glimpse of what it feels like
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925462
1378
15:26
to be part of something that works,
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926840
2560
15:29
a health care system that stops bouncing you back and forth
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929400
2473
15:31
but actually improves your health,
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931873
1821
15:33
listens to you who you are,
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1127
15:34
addresses the context of your life,
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2303
15:37
whether you're rich or poor or middle class.
414
937124
4365
15:41
These stories are compelling because
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1655
15:43
not only do they tell us that we're this close
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943144
1980
15:45
to getting the healthcare system that we want,
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945124
2586
15:47
but that there's something that we can all do to get there.
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947710
2749
15:50
Doctors and nurses can get better at asking
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1862
15:52
about the context of patients' lives,
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952321
1844
15:54
not simply because it's better bedside manner,
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954165
2511
15:56
but frankly, because it's a better standard of care.
422
956676
3082
15:59
Healthcare systems and payers
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959758
2342
16:02
can start to bring in public health agencies
424
962100
2790
16:04
and departments and say,
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964890
1415
16:06
let's look at our data together.
426
966305
1538
16:07
Let's see if we can discover some patterns in our data about our patients' lives
427
967843
3526
16:11
and see if we can identify an upstream cause,
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2471
16:13
and then, as importantly, can we align the resources
429
973840
2561
16:16
to be able to address them?
430
976401
2336
16:18
Medical schools, nursing schools,
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978737
1394
16:20
all sorts of health professional education programs
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2296
16:22
can help by training the next generation of upstreamists.
433
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3756
16:26
We can also make sure that these schools
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1755
16:27
certify a backbone of the upstream approach,
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3228
16:31
and that's the community health worker.
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2195
16:33
We need many more of them in the healthcare system
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1519
16:34
if we're truly going to have it be effective,
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2353
16:37
to move from a sickcare system
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1507
16:38
to a healthcare system.
440
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1498
16:40
But finally, and perhaps most importantly,
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2048
16:42
what do we do? What do we do as patients?
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1002286
2559
16:44
We can start by simply going to our doctors
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2265
16:47
and our nurses, to our clinics,
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1007110
1709
16:48
and asking, "Is there something in where I live
445
1008819
2332
16:51
and where I work that I should be aware of?"
446
1011151
2343
16:53
Are there barriers to health that I'm just not aware of,
447
1013494
2848
16:56
and more importantly, if there are barriers
448
1016342
1958
16:58
that I'm surfacing, if I'm coming to you
449
1018300
1981
17:00
and I'm saying I think have a problem with
450
1020281
2119
17:02
my apartment or at my workplace
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2103
17:04
or I don't have access to transportation,
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1024503
2196
17:06
or there's a park that's way too far,
453
1026699
1631
17:08
so sorry doctor, I can't take your advice
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1028330
1860
17:10
to go and jog,
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1030190
2086
17:12
if those problems exist,
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1032276
1881
17:14
then doctor, are you willing to listen?
457
1034157
3296
17:17
And what can we do together
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1037453
1413
17:18
to improve my health where it begins?
459
1038866
2570
17:21
If we're all able to do this work,
460
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2444
17:23
doctors and healthcare systems,
461
1043880
1539
17:25
payers, and all of us together,
462
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2080
17:27
we'll realize something about health.
463
1047499
2194
17:29
Health is not just a personal responsibility or phenomenon.
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3422
17:33
Health is a common good.
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1053115
3502
17:36
It comes from our personal investment in knowing
466
1056617
1918
17:38
that our lives matter,
467
1058535
2281
17:40
the context of where we live and where we work,
468
1060816
2128
17:42
eat, and sleep, matter,
469
1062944
1736
17:44
and that what we do for ourselves,
470
1064680
1624
17:46
we also should do for those
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2120
17:48
whose living and working conditions
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1068424
2016
17:50
again, can be hard, if not harsh.
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2618
17:53
We can all invest in making sure that we improve
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1073058
2486
17:55
the allocation of resources upstream,
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2250
17:57
but at the same time work together
476
1077794
2183
17:59
and show that we can move healthcare
477
1079977
2733
18:02
upstream.
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2037
18:04
We can improve health where it begins.
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3073
18:07
Thank you.
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2027
18:09
(Applause)
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1089847
2554
About this website

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