New President, New Health Policies?

Here at TDI we focus a lot of energy on trying to improve access to and quality of health care services and exploring ways to make health care more affordable. Although many people recognize this, it was great to hear President Obama say in his inaugural address that “we will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost.” We know from The Dartmouth Atlas that the cost of care has little to nothing to do with the quality of care that patients receive and we are glad the administration seems to be asking questions about what options there are to improve the quality of care while cutting the costs. We were all excited about the white paper submitted by several of our faculty members to the new administration (which is featured on the TDI homepage now http://tdi.dartmouth.edu/) and are excited to have that as a wonderful example as we begin to find topics to write white papers of our own for our Environmental and Occupational Health class this term. Hopefully some of the issues raised in the TDI white paper will be addressed, as for now we have a new president, and now we’ll just have to wait…and study.

-Shannon