What people eat, where they live, and how much they earn can impact their overall health more than the medical care they receive — sometimes much more. Now, for the first time, federal policymakers are trying to measure and screen for what are known as the drivers of health. 

On this week’s episode of The Dose, Shanoor Seervai talks with Alice Chen, M.D., chief medical officer at Covered California, the state’s health insurance marketplace, about gathering momentum in the health sector to acknowledge and address nonmedical risk factors for health. 

Chen, a physician with years of experience caring for underserved patients (as well as a former Commonwealth Fund Harvard Fellow in Minority Health Policy), explains how food insecurity, housing instability, and transportation issues, among others, are all inextricably linked to people’s health. 

“As people started thinking about how you actually improve health and not just provide transactional health care services, you start to widen your lens and realize, oh, there are all these other factors that are actually driving population health,” she says. 

For the next few months, The Dose will be going on hiatus. We’ll be back in touch in the new year with more conversations about how to make health care better for all Americans.