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  Today in Health it, this story is social determinants from health leaders. My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week in Health IT a channel dedicated to keeping health IT staff current and engaged. I wanna thank our sponsor for today's series Healthcare.

They reached out about this time last year and loved our mission to develop the next generation of health leaders. The rest is history, as they say. If you believe in our mission as they did. And wanna support the show, please shoot me a note at partner at this week in health it.com. All right, here's today's story, and I love the concepts in this story.

I think we need to recognize that 80% of health is not related to healthcare. It is socioeconomic where we live, level of education, access to healthy food, and a host of other factors. My so what on this will be the question that I would like to ask each of these leaders at their next panel on this topic.

And this story comes from Forbes. It is Dr. Miriam Noel, md and the title is Real Ways To Implement Solutions for Healthcare Disparities, and it's from a panel discussion. And you had Steven Klasko on here. You had Kevin Lofton. I. CEO for Common Spirit Health. On the panel you had Karina Edwards, CEO of Quill and former guests of this weekend Health IT on there as well.

You had Jayan, ou, md, jd, president and Chief Executive Officer of Geisinger, and you had a senior VP from A A RP. Let me see if I can find it. Jean, G-J-E-A-N, Asus, A-C-C-I-U-S PhD on the panel as well. A great panel, my gosh, this would be a phenomenal panel. It was at a uh, Forbes conference, it looks like, based on the picture, and lemme give you some of the excerpts.

Should your health insurance company build a movie theater? Should a physician buy you a refrigerator? Kevin Lofton, CEO of Common Spirit shared a story. That's exactly what Common Spirit ended up doing. They had a bunch of teens that were traveling 70 miles to catch a movie, which was endangering their health while driving in unsafe weather.

So they built a movie theater in the community, and this was at the Forbes Healthcare Summit. Lofton shared the story of a patient who kept going to the er, then he enrolled into the Total Health Roadmap and they found out that that person needed a refrigerator. So they bought him a refrigerator.

Alright, so those are some of the stories, and again, great stories, phenomenal things that Common Spirit is doing. I. and Steven Klasko weighs in and as is his way of doing things, he really brings things down to a single sentence, and I love it. The social determinants of health may be more important than you think, says Dr.

Klasko, and he calls this phenomenon when your zip code is more important than your genetic code. In an era of rapid innovation in healthcare, Dr. Klasko interviewed four health leaders about their solutions. To improving social determinants of health, the barriers to overall good health that are due to social factors, and the senior VP of a RP believes that social determinants of health are too important to ignore.

Absolutely true. The solutions he offered were concrete First, invest in the community. A A RP has donated 1.6 million to community projects such as renovating houses. They're also building what they call A A RP, sponsored fitness parks and will have 15 parks open by the end of this year in honor of A A R P'S 60th anniversary.

All right, so that's good stuff. Karina Edwards, CEO of Quill. Quill is actually a subsidiary of Comcast, NBC Universal, and she talks about the challenge of reaching these people with technology and talks about the program that Comcast has out there that delivers internet access to 8 million people for less than $10 a month through their internet essentials program.

And I think that's . Key. To be honest with you, I don't know how people get ahead today without the internet. And this may just be the technologist and me talking, but I'm not sure how you get a job. I'm not sure how you do research. I'm not sure how you see Dr. Google. Uh, I'm not sure how you get education for your kids during a pandemic.

There are so many things I think, that are essential to be connected to broadband, and I think that should be the National Highway system that's going on in our country right now. And when we talk infrastructure and we throw all these goofy things in there, we should just take 'em all out. Give everyone in the country broadband and see where that takes us.

'cause I think it's gonna take us in good direction. J Juan ou, president of Geiser, shared that after Geisinger implemented fresh food pharmacies, they're now providing roughly 10,000 meals per week. In the program to the participants, they've also created Geisinger at Home Program where the sickest patients receive care services in their home.

These real solutions have led to improvements in their patients' clinical conditions like diabetes, emergency room visits, obviously, and hospital admissions. Which makes perfect sense. While leading to a greater patient and family engagement, Dr. EU shared with me. By tackling these social and structural barriers, we've been able to make health easier for our communities.

The overall goal Dr. Klasko shared is to move away from sick care system towards a well-based system, and who can argue with any of this. This is great stuff. I love what these leaders are doing. You know my so what? Amen. Amen. Amen. You're preaching to the choir. Now my question becomes. Who's gonna pay for this?

I don't mean to be crass, but follow the money Hasn't steered me too far off course yet. Show me the economic model to support these efforts, and I'm your biggest fan. I'll be your loudest proponent. I. This requires a cultural shift. Cultural shifts require leadership at the highest levels. There are so many times I hear within healthcare that we need to get executive buy-in for this program to be successful.

Well, in a national cultural shift where we're gonna go into a wellness program, you need to get executive buy-in. Too many things are warring against health in our society for this to be a battle that we can win without a major cultural shift. I'm gonna cite one example, and I realize this is a silly example, but there's a ton of 'em.

Go to any grocery store today. Go to any grocery store, inventory the items in most aisles for sugar and salt content. I'm just looking at two items that we know lead to health related issues. You know exactly what you're going to find. It takes a massive amount of willpower education and a little more money to eat healthy.

The culture is working against us on so many levels. To live a healthy life, can a health system make the necessary investments to put together the necessary programs to do anything more than a token change to health in their communities? I, I don't, I don't think so. Probably not. It doesn't mean that they shouldn't stop trying.

That would be defeat us, and it just means we need to enlist more allies in this battle, elevate the conversation, bring this to the national consciousness. I'm not entirely sure what it looks like, but I think it looks more like what Intermountain is doing with the United Way than it looks like a single health system.

Doing a kind act for one person or a group of students. It takes more than a village. In this case, it takes more than a city. It takes a nation. This has to be a concerted effort. We need to elevate the conversation, invite more partners into the work. This is a great place to address health equities, get the people.

Who are already in the zip codes that struggle, the help they need to make people healthy. This is a tough one. I love what these leaders are saying, but until there are more people working on this together with state and national messaging to go along with it, it's going to be slow going. Alright? That's all for today.

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