Vulnerable Populations

While watching Rishi Manchanda's video on upstreamists, I remember doing a short post on Rebecca Onie. She is the co-founder and CEO of Health Leads, a company that seeks to help low-income patients address the overlooked causes of their illnesses. Rashi Manchanda spoke about similar things that Health Leads does. He explains that a simple question about a patient's living conditions was able to have a significant, positive impact on her health. Health Leads is attentive to the many barriers people may have when addressing their health, such as food, shelter, and transportation. I agree with Rishi Manchanda that we need to include these other factors that affect one's health in their treatment. It's not just about prescribing medicine so that patients get better. It's also about the need to look into their everyday environments and see what changes can be made there so that they don't sick as often, if at all.

Comments

  1. Emebet AkliluSeptember 11, 2018 at 10:08 PM

    Once again you hit the nail on the head, Chris. It is such an important function of public health, the ability and the responsibility of understanding the factors that affect health. Especially the factors that are often overlooked. I think bureaucratic processes often get in the way of an organizations ability to truly affect change in the lives of the people they serve. For example, many hospitals and clinics are given funding based on how many patients they see per day. How effective is this process? What about low income or homeless patients who do not have continuous care because of financial or housing needs. There are so many things that affect health and these topics need to be fully considered when addressing vulnerable populations.

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  2. UnknownNovember 19, 2018 at 5:20 PM

    I loved this video, it definitely addressed the need to ask more questions for patients. Often time, when discussing this idea with providers they state that they don't want to ask too much because they can't make big changes which I think is a false statement. I think the role of clinicians is not only to provide care for the sick, but also prevent illness, and link their community members to the appropriate resources. For example, I had a patient during a rotation who was unable to make it to their appointments due to lack of transportation. We really really needed to get this patient into the clinic to try to help them understand the importance of controlling their diabetes and helping them do so by adjusting medications. Therefore, because I found out their barrier, I was able to connect them with the proper resources to obtain transportation. This was huge for this patient who now has better control of their chronic illnesses. I think it's extremely important to find out more and treat the patient more holistically.

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