Making the social determinants of health the focus for healthcare improvement efforts

[TedHutchinson]

Making the social determinants of health the focus for healthcare improvement effort

Quality improvement efforts must start to focus on the environments in which humans are “born, grow, live, work, and age,” argues Kaveh G Shojania

We invest billions to develop new drugs for cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, etc. but little to address the reasons they became common in the first place.
We invest massively in developing and evaluating the effectiveness of bariatric surgery, but spend orders of magnitude less on public health and policy interventions to reduce obesity.
An explosion of new inhalers for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease have appeared over the past 20 years. Yet we have invested almost nothing in reducing air pollution or climate crisis induced wildfires, both of which produce detectable effects on rates of hospitalisation and even all cause mortality

BMJ seem to be moving in the right direction but I cannot see UK goverment taxing the super rich to reduce the burden on those least able to pay.

[Sarah(sjc)]

If we (the taxpayer) were investing the billions in new drugs, then funds could be diverted, but having basically privatised research, that ship has long sailed. And the researchers will undoubtedly be dismissive of prevention, they would be out of work. However, in the long term, it's got to be the only sustainable way forward.