To achieve whole person care, we can try layering new social services on top of medical care. But Dr. Rishi Manchanda believes we should move further upstream and ask, what will it take to actually improve health in communities? From founding Rx the Vote to HealthBegins, Rishi is committed to building community social capital in America. 

We discuss:

• Why he created HealthBegins, which is now halfway to its goal of transforming equity in 250 communities by 2025
• How California is making practice transformation a foundation of whole person care
• Rx the Vote and the important role of health organizations in voter engagement
• Kaiser Permanente's health, housing and justice initiative

Rishi thinks all public health students should study and know how to shift the political determinants of health:

“I think we can recognize there's ways to… get the dollars out the door, get the services out the door, get the access that we need while [also building] local governance. And I think that's what I see as a really interesting opportunity for us in California… There are opportunities here for public health schools, including Berkeley, to [help] public health students… understand the political determinants of health and then understand their role [to]... address them and improve them.”

Relevant Links

HealthBegins website

Rishi’s book The Upstream Doctors

Rishi's TEDx Talk: "What Makes Us Get Sick? Look Upstream."

New collaborative community health planning model in California

Policy requiring California Medicaid health plans to invest 5-7.5% of profits into local communities 

California Medicaid investments in practice transformation

Kaiser Permanente's health, housing and justice initiative

Oregon CCO model

An interview with Rishi Manchanda

About Our Guest

Dr. Manchanda is Founder and President of HealthBegins, a social enterprise that provides training, clinic redesign, and technology to transform health care and the social determinants of health. Dr. Manchanda is a dual board-certified internist and pediatrician, a board member of the National Physicians Alliance, and a fellow in the California Health Care Foundation’s Healthcare Leadership Program. He is the lead physician for homeless primary care at the VA in Los Angeles, where he has built clinics for high-utilizer homeless veterans with complex chronic disease. Dr. Manchanda was the first Director of Social Medicine and Health Equity at a large community health center network in south Los Angeles. In 2008, he started RxDemocracy, a nonpartisan coalition that has registered over 30,000 voters in doctors’ offices and hospitals nationwide. His 2013 book, “The Upstream Doctors,” introduces a new model of the health care workforce that includes clinical “Upstreamists” who address social determinants of health.

Source: https://sirenetwork.ucsf.edu/staff/rishi-manchanda

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