ORLANDO, FLORIDA — The United States is at a critical juncture in its efforts to treat chronic diseases, particularly type 2 diabetes, and now has a chance to change the dangerous trajectory it’s currently following, FDA Commissioner Robert Califf said Friday.
“The U.S. is leading the world in technology development, innovation, new gadgets of all kinds, new drugs, you name it,” he said. “These advantages unfortunately are not resulting in superior health and outcomes for the U.S., population, or for most individuals in the U.S.”
Health outcomes as a whole are deteriorating in the U.S., Califf said in his remarks at the American Diabetes Association conference, but he sees one outlier.
“There’s an exception for type 1 diabetes, which I believe is on the verge of a major breakthrough in terms of the biology and biological therapies that can make an enormous difference for this special population of people with diabetes,” he said. “But on the other hand, for the larger epidemic of type 2 diabetes, we’re failing right now.”
For type 2 […]
As stated in the article: “Califf saw digital approaches to diabetes care being developed while he worked at Google and Alphabet. He also saw adoption of these devices follow a familiar pattern: They’re taken up by “people with Ph.D.s and living in urban areas, leaving most people out.” and “I think we’re at a point now between digitization and AI where we can either use digital technology to improve health for everyone or we can use it to cater to wealthy people who are highly educated.”
This approach to using data and technology to help everyone is called “population health”. When using this approach it becomes quickly clear that we cannot have a for profit driven health system and a population health approach at the same time. The reason is that population health is designed to address the “social determinants” of health: Access to clean water, nutritious food, transportation to primary care appointments and to the pharmacy for life saving medication. The money to support these efforts which involves cases managers and navigators ( imagine the system is so complex it needs navigators) must come from somewhere. That somewhere is either hospital or insurance company profits. So dear reader, will your so called representative support these things? Find out who he/she accepts money from. Follow the money and vote for those who don’t accept it from insurance conglomerates, hospital associations, or their executives. Look at Opensecrets.org. Connect the dots, think outside the box.