(The following is a response to an event co-hosted by NEJM Catalyst and LDI CHIBE on “Patient Engagement: Behavioral Strategies for Better Health.” It has been cross-posted to the Leonard Davis Institute’s Health PolicySense blog)
As a medical student going into primary care, I value health behavior change not only as a disease prevention strategy, but as a way of empowering patients. In many areas of our health care system, we ask our patients to be passive recipients of care: to take their pills obligingly, get their colonoscopies on the appointed date, and to consent to the surgeries we recommend. In health behaviors such as diet and exercise, patients are instead active promoters of their own wellbeing.
This altered power balance in which the patient has control and the provider has only influence can make health care practitioners who are used to being in charge feel deeply uncomfortable. However, with a third of all premature deaths in America attributable to health behaviors, there is tremendous opportunity here to better our nation’s health by partnering with patients to promote more healthy behaviors.
This image is enough for most of you in the audience to start building your differential diagnosis. When this older gentleman shows up in your emergency department sweating profusely and complaining of chest pain, you’re going to instinctively reach for an aspirin and an EKG.
Toward Health 