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ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ Minute: Population ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½

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ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ Minute: Population ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½

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 ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ Minute, population health specialist discusses how prevention can drastically improve treatment and significantly lower healthcare costs.

Episode Transcript

Announcer: The ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ Minute, produced by University of Utah ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½. How can the concept of population health make people healthier? Angie Fagerlin is the Chair of the Department of Population ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ Sciences at University of Utah ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½. 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.