What if instead of treating illness we also confronted the reasons Americans get sick in the first place? That’s the origin of this podcast and also the four billion dollar question Dr. Bechara Choucair is tackling at Kaiser Permanente as Chief Community Health Officer. He joins Claudia to talk about the organization’s focus on climate change and health, workforce pipelines and addressing unmet social needs.

We discuss:

• The surprising fact that two-thirds of KP’s members (who are mostly covered by employer insurance) have at least one unmet social need
• How the Common Health Coalition is building bridges between healthcare and public health
• What KP is doing to tackle a big problem limiting the mental health workforce: only 57% of masters trained therapists get licensed
• What it took for KP to achieve carbon neutrality

“We need more and more bridges between public health and healthcare... [They have] operated as two separate disciplines operating in their own silos... [When] there is a public health emergency we build more bridges, we strengthen those bridges that already exist. And then when that public health emergency subsides, we all retreat into our own disciplines and we continue that siloed journey.”

Relevant Links

• Read about the NAM initiative on climate change and health
• Explore why the US needs more community health workers from this article
• Learn more about the Common Health Coalition
• Dive into details on KP’s sustainability journey

Dr. Bechara Choucair, MD, is executive vice president and chief community health officer for Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. and Hospitals — known as Kaiser Permanente, one of America’s leading integrated health care providers and not-for-profit health plans. Dr. Choucair oversees the organization’s national community health efforts and philanthropic giving activities aimed at improving the health of its 12.2 million members and the 68 million people within the communities it serves.

Previously, Dr. Choucair served as senior vice president, Safety Net and Community Health, at Trinity Health, and was the commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health.

Dr. Choucair, a family physician by training, completed his Family Practice Residency at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. He holds an MD from the American University of Beirut and a master’s degree in health care management from the University of Texas at Dallas.

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