HLTH Forward Podcast

90% of the US has a poor diet, 30 % of Americans don't do any physical activity, and we spend approximately $190 Billion on diseases related to obesity.

In this episode, Dr. Katz discusses that the cultivation of health happens outside our clinical setting, bolstered by the four pillars: ESNC- eating right, sleeping well, having no toxins such as tobacco, and having a strong sense of community. We further discuss the importance of moving away from a system that enables disease care and moving towards an actual healthcare system that involves education - nutrition, culinary as medicine and healthy living in general, increasing access and affordability to wellness and investing in technology that can help us scale and sustain these initiatives.

 We further share our thoughts about the importance of eating in a way that protects our planet, invokes compassion and empathy in our fellow beings, and we bust some nutrition myths!

We conclude by imagining a world where heart attacks, diabetes, cancer, and Alzheimer's diseases are reduced by almost 80% by focusing on wellness. Last but not least, we acknowledge and reinforce that we are all extended families of humans and need to listen more, reflect more, and react less. Build more bridges and fewer bunkers.

David L. Katz, MD, MPH, FACPM, FACP, FACLM  is the founder and former director of Yale University’s Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center (1998-2019); Past President of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine; President and Founder of the non-profit True Health Initiative; and Founder and CEO of Diet ID, Inc. He is a Fellow of the American College of Preventive Medicine; the American College of Physicians; the American College of Lifestyle Medicine; and Morse College, Yale University.

The recipient of numerous awards for teaching, writing, and contributions to public health, Katz was a 2019 nominee for a James Beard Foundation Award in health journalism, has been a widely supported nominee for the position of U.S. Surgeon General, and has received three honorary doctorates. earned his BA at Dartmouth College (1984); his MD at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (1988); and his MPH from the Yale University School of Public Health (1993). He completed sequential residency training and board certification in Internal Medicine (1991) and Preventive Medicine/Public Health (1993).

About Host
Smriti Kirubanandan has a strong background in robotics and public health and is a Healthcare Executive, where she focuses on driving significant transformations within the healthcare ecosystem, concentrating on customer experience, intelligent automation, data analytics and insights, and is determined to make healthcare more accessible and affordable through innovation and empathy. She also spearheads brand development, thought leadership, and market research. 

Smriti is a selected Young Global Leader 2023 by the World Economic Forum, a member of the Young Leaders Circle at the Milken Institute, and is the Founder of HLTH Forward Podcast- an award-winning media platform that hosts healthcare leaders, policymakers, and artists to discuss the challenges in the system and what we could do collectively to move healthcare forward. 

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We are in an era where we need to meet patients where they are.  Is there a much better place than a retail health hub that enables to meet one at the intersection of information, proactive care, and healthy products? Retail organizations have started to convert their physical locations into health hubs to host primary care physicians, wellness advocates, and health screening programs to make healthcare more affordable, accessible, and genuinely preventive.

In this episode, I speak with Dr. Joneigh Khlaldun, who serves as the Vice President and Chief Health Equity Officer for CVS Health. We explore her current strategies and execution plans with retail health, technology innovations that would propel us to a better health and wellness ecosystem, and the importance of leveraging retail health as the point of contact for our people to take health into their own hands. 
 
Joneigh Khaldun is the Vice President and Chief Health Equity Officer at CVS Health. Prior to serving in this position, she served as the Chief Medical Executive for the State of Michigan and Chief Deputy Director for Health in the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. On February 10, 2021, she was announced as a member of the COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force under the Biden - Harris Administration.


CVS Health is the leading health solutions company that delivers care in ways no one else can. We reach people in more ways and improve the health of communities across America through our local presence, digital channels and our nearly 300,000 dedicated colleagues – including more than 40,000 physicians, pharmacists, nurses and nurse practitioners.
Their goal is to help people navigate the healthcare system – and their personal health care – by improving access, lowering costs and being a trusted partner for every meaningful moment of health. And we do it all with heart, each and every day.

About Host
Smriti Kirubanandan has a strong background in robotics and public health and is a Healthcare Executive, where she focuses on driving significant transformations within the healthcare ecosystem, concentrating on customer experience, intelligent automation, data analytics and insights, and is determined to make healthcare more accessible and affordable through innovation and empathy. She also spearheads brand development, thought leadership, and market research. 

Smriti is a selected Young Global Leader 2023 by the World Economic Forum, a member of the Young Leaders Circle at the Milken Institute, and is the Founder of HLTH Forward Podcast- an award-winning media platform that hosts healthcare leaders, policymakers, and artists to discuss the challenges in the system and what we could do collectively to move healthcare forward. 

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Social Determinants of Health are conditions where people are born, work, live, and play. SDOH drive a significant portion of Public Health issues. Kaiser Permanente is a leading healthcare organization that is laser-focused on this space. Kaiser Permanente invests $3 billion annually to improve conditions for health in the communities it serves and is shifting how it views health to include social factors like safe housing, economic wellbeing and racial justice.

Dr. Anand Shah (VP, Social Health) explains the impact and importance of viewing patients in a holistic format to understand their complete ecosystems and provide care and services in a way that respects and supports their social circumstances, while continuing to invest in their communities. Through its Thriving Communities social impact investment fund, Kaiser Permanente has invested $400 Million to create and preserve affordable housing in low-income and communities of color.

Some additional areas where the health care system is focused are environmental stewardship, increased access to healthcare through safety net partnerships and its own system, safe and successful schools, advancing policies that improve conditions for health in our nation’s largest cities, and social health

A laser-focused approach to moving from a state of enablement to empowerment is created by building a solid infrastructure, expanding partnerships, and taking a human-centered approach to designing solutions. Dr. Anand Shah and Kaiser Permanente's core strategy is to make a social impact on its 12.6 million health plan members and the many millions more who live in its communities that is sustainable and scalable.

About Dr. Anand Shah
Anand Shah, MD, MS is the Vice President of Social Health at Kaiser Permanente. He is responsible for developing and implementing Kaiser Permanente’s national social health strategy. Anand was most recently the Chief Product and Clinical Officer at Pieces Technologies, a company that utilizes clinical AI to provide integrated monitoring, prediction, and organizational learning services and software for hospitals, health systems and community-based organizations. There, he was responsible for clinical, data science, product, and technology teams, and he helped develop a new platform to connect health systems and community organizations together to address social determinants of health.

About Host
Smriti Kirubanandan has a strong background in robotics and public health and is a Healthcare Executive, where she focuses on driving significant transformations within the healthcare ecosystem, concentrating on customer experience, intelligent automation, data analytics and insights, and is determined to make healthcare more accessible and affordable through innovation and empathy. She also spearheads brand development, thought leadership, and market research. 

Smriti is a selected Young Global Leader 2023 by the World Economic Forum, a member of the Young Leaders Circle at the Milken Institute, and is the Founder of HLTH Forward Podcast- an award-winning media platform that hosts healthcare leaders, policymakers, and artists to discuss the challenges in the system and what we could do collectively to move healthcare forward. 

Support the show

Food is a powerful tool that can bring communities together and create a sense of belonging and empowerment. While we are in a global food security crisis, this episode I speak with Robert Egger , who I call the King of Kitchens on his views about using food as a powerful tool to unite humanity and serve each other for the greater good. 

His creations  DC Central Kitchen is a nationally recognized "community kitchen" that recycles food from around Washington, D.C., and uses it as a tool to train unemployed adults to develop work skills while providing thousands of meals for local service agencies in the process and LA Kitchen- operates Strong Food, a wholly owned, for-profit subsidiary that hires training program graduates and competes for food service contracts, with an emphasis on opportunities to serve healthy senior meals. 

L.A. Weekly named Robert one of its 2016 People of the Year, and in 2015, he was given the Conscious Leader of the Year award by Conscious Capitalism. He was included in The Non-Profit Times’ list of the “50 Most Powerful and Influential” nonprofit leaders from 2006-2009. He was the recipient of the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington’s 2007 “Lifetime Achievement” award and the 2004 James Beard Foundation “Humanitarian of the Year” award. Robert has also been named an Oprah Angel, a Washingtonian of the Year, a Point of Light, a Food Hero by Food Tank, a REAL Food Innovator by the US Healthful Food Council and one of the Ten Most Caring People in America by the Caring Institute. He is also a 15-gallon blood donor to the American Red Cross

About Host
Smriti Kirubanandan has a strong background in robotics and public health and is a Healthcare Executive, where she focuses on driving significant transformations within the healthcare ecosystem, concentrating on customer experience, intelligent automation, data analytics and insights, and is determined to make healthcare more accessible and affordable through innovation and empathy. She also spearheads brand development, thought leadership, and market research. 

Smriti is a selected Young Global Leader 2023 by the World Economic Forum, a member of the Young Leaders Circle at the Milken Institute, and is the Founder of HLTH Forward Podcast- an award-winning media platform that hosts healthcare leaders, policymakers, and artists to discuss the challenges in the system and what we could do collectively to move healthcare forward. 

Support the show

Globally, 2.37 billion people don’t have access to food. With a war in Ukraine, rising inflation rates , lack of nutrition education and limited tools with farmers along with our aging population increasing significantly, we are in a global food security crisis.

 We need a system that empowers us and leaders to drive this globally. This episode, I speak with Ertharin Cousin, about the future of food systems, importance of circulating diverse crops, creating economic empowerment and changing policies to address systemic issues.

About Ertharin Cousin
CEO, Food Systems for the Future, Global Executive Director World Food Program, Forbes 100 list Most Powerful women and listed as one of the 500 most powerful women in the planet! 

Foreign ambassador, food service executive, and public affairs director Ertharin Cousin was born in 1957, in Chicago, Illinois. She received her B.A. degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1979, and went on to receive her J.D. degree from the University of Georgia School of Law in 1982. In 1993, Cousin moved to Washington D.C. and began working as the deputy chief of staff for the Democratic National Committee. In 1994, she began serving as the U.S. State Department’s liaison to the White House, in which capacity she received a Meritorious Service Award.

In 1996, Cousin stopped her work for the State Department in order to run the Illinois portion of President Bill Clinton and Vice President Albert Gore’s reelection campaign and in 1997, Cousin was appointed to the board for International Food and Agricultural Development and began serving as vice president for government and community Affairs for Jewel Food Stores. Two years later, when Albertsons Foods bought Jewel, Cousin began serving as group vice president of public affairs for Albertsons and was later promoted to senior vice president of public affairs. In 2002, Cousin joined the board of directors for food bank and food relief distribution nonprofit Feeding America and in 2004, she became its executive vice president and chief operating officer. In this capacity, she led food relief efforts during Hurricane Katrina which helped to deliver over 62 million pounds of food to the devastated Gulf Coast of the U.S.

In 2006, Cousin left Feeding America to found and serve as president of the Polk Street Group, a public affairs consulting firm based in Chicago, Illinois. After serving in that capacity for three years, Cousin left the company in the hands of her son, Maurice Cousin, in order to accept President Barack Obama’s appointment as U.S. Representative to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture in Rome, Italy. During her time with the U.N. agencies, she has worked to help set up several new country-led aid programs and has also worked to bring food relief to Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, after the massive earthquake there in 2010.

About Host
Smriti Kirubanandan has a strong background in robotics and public health and is a Healthcare Executive, where she focuses on driving significant transformations within the healthcare ecosystem, concentrating on customer experience, intelligent automation, data analytics and insights, and is determined to make healthcare more accessible and affordable through innovation and empathy. She also spearheads brand development, thought leadership, and market research. 

Smriti is a selected Young Global Leader 2023 by the World Economic Forum, a member of the Young Leaders Circle at the Milken Institute, and is the Founder of HLTH Forward Podcast- an award-winning media platform that hosts healthcare leaders, policymakers, and artists to discuss the challenges in the system and what we could do collectively to move healthcare forward. 

Support the show

Widely regarded as one of the world's most iconic rock musicians, Bryan Adams, a platinum and Grammy Award winner, has won countless prizes and awards and sold over 80 million albums worldwide. He's well recognized for his songs Summer of '69, Everything I do, and many more. Bryan Adams has been vegan for about 30 years and believes in plant-based eating, farm-to-table concept, and the vital role of community and music as medicine.

His recent music album release, "So happy it hurts," is his way of bringing back a sense of community, uplifting us with his music, and breaking the sense of isolation in the post-pandemic world.

In this episode, we speak about plant-based eating, the role of community, and Music RX: Music as medicine. Bryan shares that the importance of eating healthy starts with our table- where we need to start locally and then scale globally, the importance of changing school meals into nutritious ones and our need to treat all living beings equally and move into a more plant-based lifestyle. Beyond all, we discuss the power of music, its healing nature, and the sense of togetherness and deeper meaning we find.

Change starts within and with us, while compassion serves as the tool, to make this world a better place.

About Host
Smriti Kirubanandan has a strong background in robotics and public health and is a Healthcare Executive, where she focuses on driving significant transformations within the healthcare ecosystem, concentrating on customer experience, intelligent automation, data analytics and insights, and is determined to make healthcare more accessible and affordable through innovation and empathy. She also spearheads brand development, thought leadership, and market research. 

Smriti is a selected Young Global Leader 2023 by the World Economic Forum, a member of the Young Leaders Circle at the Milken Institute, and is the Founder of HLTH Forward Podcast- an award-winning media platform that hosts healthcare leaders, policymakers, and artists to discuss the challenges in the system and what we could do collectively to move healthcare forward. 

Support the show

The COVID- 19 Pandemic in the United States has caused drastic shifts in our life. The disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS - CoV-2) has been one of the leading causes of death in 2020 in the United States, right after heart disease and cancer. 92,38,677 confirmed cases, 10,36,990 deaths, 261,961,618 vaccinated with one dose and 223,457,170 completely vaccinated.

This pandemic has brought to our surface the many disparities and foundational issues within our healthcare system and society. Fears about the disease, mistrust, misinformation about the vaccinations, lack of resources and supplies, increased burnout amongst physicians and nurses, and mental and physical health takes a toll. Have we recovered, and are we ready for the future of Pandemics?

Dr. Atul Nakhasi is a Senior Advisor at the Office of the US Surgeon General and a Physician at Los Angeles County serving vulnerable communities. He completed his Master's in Public Policy from Harvard University and MD from John Hopkins School of Medicine.
Dr, Nakhasi is the Founder of This is Our Shot Campaign, one of nation's largest  vaccination campaign https://thisisourshot.info/

About Host
Smriti Kirubanandan has a strong background in robotics and public health and is a Healthcare Executive, where she focuses on driving significant transformations within the healthcare ecosystem, concentrating on customer experience, intelligent automation, data analytics and insights, and is determined to make healthcare more accessible and affordable through innovation and empathy. She also spearheads brand development, thought leadership, and market research. 

Smriti is a selected Young Global Leader 2023 by the World Economic Forum, a member of the Young Leaders Circle at the Milken Institute, and is the Founder of HLTH Forward Podcast- an award-winning media platform that hosts healthcare leaders, policymakers, and artists to discuss the challenges in the system and what we could do collectively to move healthcare forward. 

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Critical Care demand has been growing consistently every year by 2% due to the increase in aging population. Most of the critical care system is fragmented, under high stress and we have experts working in this space to make it innovative, efficient and sustainable. 

Lakshman Swamy, is a Medical Director at MassHealth focused on Payment & Care Delivery Innovation and an Assistant Professor of Population & Quantitative Health Sciences at UMass Medical School. Clinically, he is a pulmonary/critical care physician at Cambridge Health Alliance and an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He completed his Internal Medicine & Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine training at Boston Medical Center & VA Boston. He is interested in addressing the delivery of care and working environments to reduce burnout and improve patient outcomes.

Takeaways

• Physician burnout was increased significantly during Covid- 19
• Less focus on making numbers perfect, more focused on high value care - least risky, least invasive and highest quality care
• Patient throughput and predicting supply chain demand is critical for the future of pandemics 
• Future of Health: Healthcare without addressing social determinants of health is not sustainable, more emphasis on patient engagement and education is required, better standardization of processes focusing on unique characteristics of patients would be a game changer 

About Host
Smriti Kirubanandan has a strong background in robotics and public health and is a Healthcare Executive, where she focuses on driving significant transformations within the healthcare ecosystem, concentrating on customer experience, intelligent automation, data analytics and insights, and is determined to make healthcare more accessible and affordable through innovation and empathy. She also spearheads brand development, thought leadership, and market research. 

Smriti is a selected Young Global Leader 2023 by the World Economic Forum, a member of the Young Leaders Circle at the Milken Institute, and is the Founder of HLTH Forward Podcast- an award-winning media platform that hosts healthcare leaders, policymakers, and artists to discuss the challenges in the system and what we could do collectively to move healthcare forward. 

Support the show

Obesity is a growing concern in America, with 36% of our population being obese, healthcare costs are increasing proportionally. Approaching obesity with empathy by understanding the root causes, driving the right strategies to reduce healthcare impact and improving quality of life are critical to making Americans healthy. Is the Future of America looking skinny? 

Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford is an obesity medicine physician, internist, and pediatrician and an associate professor of medicine and pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. She is one of the most cited scientists in the field of obesity.

Takeaways 

•  Obesity is now considered a medical disease
•  We need to focus on creating an obesity policy
• Viewing patients more than their physical appearance and taking an intersectional point of view is required to address the root causes of this issue
• Equity plays a key role to address systemic issues 
• Proactive healthcare and empathy go a long way

About Host
Smriti Kirubanandan has a strong background in robotics and public health and is a Healthcare Executive, where she focuses on driving significant transformations within the healthcare ecosystem, concentrating on customer experience, intelligent automation, data analytics and insights, and is determined to make healthcare more accessible and affordable through innovation and empathy. She also spearheads brand development, thought leadership, and market research. 

Smriti is a selected Young Global Leader 2023 by the World Economic Forum, a member of the Young Leaders Circle at the Milken Institute, and is the Founder of HLTH Forward Podcast- an award-winning media platform that hosts healthcare leaders, policymakers, and artists to discuss the challenges in the system and what we could do collectively to move healthcare forward. 

Support the show

In the U.S, we are exposed to a spectrum of care: Over care, where 30% of care is unnecessary, improper care - 440,000 deaths/year, and people with no access to care. Clinical decision-making is critical to giving patients the proper care at the right time. When supported by technology, this vital decision can make the process precise, efficient, fast, and ultimately save lives.

Archie Mayani serves as SVP & Chief Product Officer for Decision Support @Change Healthcare.
Before her current role, she served as the Head of Product and Content Operations at Amazon, VP/GM for Optum Prevention Business in North America and Global markets, and Sr. Director for Medicaid for Optum Population Health Management.
Archie is passionate about healthcare and global health issues and has devoted more than 20 years to the field.

Change Healthcare (Nasdaq: CHNG) is a leading independent healthcare technology company focused on insights, innovation, and accelerating the transformation of the U.S. healthcare system through the power of the Change Healthcare Platform.

About Host
Smriti Kirubanandan has a strong background in robotics and public health and is a Healthcare Executive, where she focuses on driving significant transformations within the healthcare ecosystem, concentrating on customer experience, intelligent automation, data analytics and insights, and is determined to make healthcare more accessible and affordable through innovation and empathy. She also spearheads brand development, thought leadership, and market research. 

Smriti is a selected Young Global Leader 2023 by the World Economic Forum, a member of the Young Leaders Circle at the Milken Institute, and is the Founder of HLTH Forward Podcast- an award-winning media platform that hosts healthcare leaders, policymakers, and artists to discuss the challenges in the system and what we could do collectively to move healthcare forward. 

Support the show