Health care systems should target population health interventions to patients with existing chronic diseases to bolster COVID-19 outcomes, researchers in a recent opinion piece suggest.
“The global response has been to treat COVID-19 as a vertical disease rather than addressing the full ecosystem of the COVID-19 response or its interaction with the NCD pandemic or poverty,” one of the authors, Columbia Mailman School’s Nina Schwalbe writes in a separate article. “This is particularly urgent given that poverty is now both a driver of COVID-mortality and an outcome of the response. Rather than relying on a vertical approach, it is time to switch gears — assess risks, target prevention, and engage community in the response and to build synergies across care platforms.”
To read HealthITAnalytics’ report on the opinion piece, click here.
