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Health Minute: Population Health

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Health Minute: Population Health

Aug 21, 2017

Population health is an approach to healthcare that aims to improve the well-being of populations in an effort to help individuals. On today's Health Minute, population health specialist Angie Fagerlin discusses how prevention can drastically improve treatment and significantly lower healthcare costs.

Episode Transcript

Announcer: The Health Minute, produced by University of Utah Health. How can the concept of population health make people healthier? Angie Fagerlin is the Chair of the Department of Population Health Sciences at University of Utah Health. Explain.

Dr. Fagerlin: Well, there is a lot of difference components of population health but one thing I really want to focus on today is prevention. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and so really what's important is to prevent people from getting sick in the first place because if we can prevent people from getting sick, we have a healthier population and we have less health care costs.

Interviewer: But that's pretty challenging to accomplish.

Dr. Fagerlin: It sure is and actually how we do that is a million-dollar question and that is what health care systems across the country are spending a lot of time thinking about. It's much easier for us and we can do this really well is to prescribe a medication. It's much harder to understand how health care systems can change people's behavior where they work, where they live and where they play.

Announcer: To find out more about this and other health and awareness topics, visit thescoperadio.com.