Students, faculty and physicians filled the French Family Science Center Friday to hear Ralph Snyderman's keynote address for the annual Prospective Health Care Club conference about the need for a change in perspective among the nation's health care providers.
Snyderman, chancellor emeritus of health affairs for the Duke University Health System, said health care providers must shift from a "reactive, symptom-oriented approach" to one that focuses on patient involvement and the prevention of chronic disease.
"We are at the leading edge of a transformation in medicine," said Snyderman, who also served as dean of Duke Medical School and CEO of DUHS from 1989 to 2004. "One of the most important things in health care will be the increasing empowerment of individuals to understand and take control of the road map for their own health."
Snyderman said the deployment of preventative, personalized health care has already proven successful with the implementation of Duke Prospective Health, a health care plan available to Duke employees.
Calling Duke an "enlightened employer" for adopting the program, he pointed to early data which suggests participants enjoy lower health care costs and fewer hospital admissions.
The plan offers patients customized care and goal-oriented health strategies based on the results of a risk assessment performed by a physician.
"Most people only go to the doctor when they are sick," he said. "The majority of people requiring health care have chronic diseases, and the system is set up to treat those diseases, not to prevent them."
Snyderman worked with several Duke undergraduates to form the Prospective Health Care Club, which organized Friday's conference, in 2005.
Angela Munasque, president and founding member of the PHCC, said the conference aimed to bring students, doctors and professors together to discuss new modes of health care.
Sophomore Joel Burrill, vice president of the PHCC forums committee, described prospective health care as "motivating wellness as opposed to treating sickness."
Burrill, along with sophomore Varun Gokarn, recently submitted a proposal to the registrar's office outlining a house course on prospective health care they hope to teach in Fall 2007.
The conference also marked the release of the first issue of the Journal of Prospective Health Care, a publication produced by the club to educate readers about the field and to discuss new approaches to health care.
Topics covered in the inaugural issue range from the ethics of personalizing treatment through genomic testing to dental health in indigenous Costa Rican communities.
Steven Ko, a prospective freshman and current senior at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, said the conference was an eye-opening experience that helped him learn more about undergraduate involvement at Duke.
"I couldn't be more proud of our undergraduates taking [prospective healthcare] on as a cause and bringing it to the community," Snyderman said.
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