M3:2 Vulnerable Populations

I really liked the TED talk by Rishi Manchanda. He talked about one of his patients, "Veronica" (I hope that was not her real name, hello HIPAA, lol). She had been to multiple doctors and emergency room visits, and still had headaches. His staff simply asked routine questions to get to the root of her problem (diagnosis). Simple questions like, where do you live and living conditions. She is a member of the vulnerable population because of her zip code of South Los Angeles. Zip codes matter, a lot! Rishi said that "working and living conditions are more than twice the impact than our genetic code". I could not agree more! Living and working conditions also "count for 60% of preventable death".

I love that as future public health providers, we are not just into "pills and procedures", like Rishi says, but we are looking for ways to prevent and treat. He talked about the upstream approach, which I have heard before but I can't remember where, and we are it. We are the upstream approach!

Vulnerable populations seem to always get the short end of the stick in healthcare unfortunately. They are too often misdiagnosed, not diagnosed, overlooked, misguided, stereotyped, etc., because of their zip code. We are different though, we care about the whole person and want to take the time to communicate with those who are vulnerable, to get them in a better situation.