The Environment Where You Live Is The Biggest Determinant Of Your Health

People understand that the environment when you live is a bigger determinant of your health outcomes than anything else, even than your diet or exercise or smoking. And those things are not addressed in healthcare. We sort of ignore them. And so you talk about healthcare without walls. What does that look like? What do we have to think about differently in how to address these things?

Healthcare is slowly moving in this direction, but they are and probably they're in a better place to address social needs. And there's an important distinction, I think, between Social needs and social determinants of health. Social determinants of health for housing, let's say, is building affordable housing. Addressing a social need is modifying the home to reduce falls, for example. For nutrition, social determinants of health are ensuring that healthy food financing initiatives you can increase the availability of healthier food, farmers market, you know, social needs is ensuring there's a home delivered meal. For transportation, social determinants of health is improving community infrastructure through land use or zoning policy for social needs. It's ensuring that there's ride sharing available so people can make their appointments. So, health care is getting into the business of social needs because they see it connected to the value proposition of improving outcomes and potentially reducing preventable health care costs. And I think that's all fine, but health care is not going to take care of the broader social determinants of health. We still need focus and resources on education and income and housing and nutrition and transportation because you're exactly right. Those have profound implications on the health of the population and are also connected to a lot of the behavioral risk factors that are driving chronic disease.