The new population health improvement series, SYNERGY, kicked off on Wednesday, September 14th. L. Ebony Boulware, MD, MPH, Chief of the Duke Division of General Internal Medicine and Director of the Duke Center for Community & Population Health Improvement, was the inaugural speaker for the event.
“This is a new series that we’re launching monthly,” says Boulware. “It is an effort to try to pull together an academic unity around population health.”
Boulware explained that improving the health of a population isn’t just about delivery of medicines or healthcare delivery, it goes much further than that and may come from factors that we don’t directly attribute to health. “What are we doing on the policy level? What are we doing in our communities? What are we doing about the social, environmental, and contextual determinants of health?”
Another important part of improving the health of a population is developing multi-sector partnerships. “We’re going to need partners in multiple sectors in our community to collectively work together to improve health,” Boulware stated.
The SYNERGY series will take place on the second Wednesday of every month. For more information on this series check out the Duke Center for Community and Population Health Improvement website. Interested in speaking at an upcoming event or becoming a partner to help improve the health of the community? Contact Pam Maxson.