Rishi Manchanda, MD, MPH is CEO at HealthBegins, a national firm that helps Medicaid-serving executives and teams meet growing state and federal requirements for health equity and social needs, exceed performance goals, and achieve long-term impact for people harmed by societal practices. He has advanced this mission throughout his career as a primary care physician, executive, and public health champion.

In this conversation, Manchanda puts the current wave of upstream service development in perspective and reinforces the concept of pursuing investments in health equity with a "portfolio" approach to maximize effectiveness and avoid the perils inherent to any emerging model of care.

Our hosts Department of Health Policy and Management Instructor Aaron Holman and second year Masters student Morgan Cooper discuss concepts from Manshanda's book and career defining and refining what it means to be a healthcare "upstreamist" and how improving outcomes can be pursued by addressing social and structural drivers of health equity, including patients’ social needs, community-level social determinants of health, and structural determinants of health equity.

Cecilia Gerard, is the Managing Director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University. Tufts has been at the forefront of nutrition policy since its really been an issue.

Cecilia (an alumni of the Department of Health Policy and Management here at Harvard) has been a private sector consultant with Deloitte, a public sector consultant across several agencies, she worked at the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission and was also an early employees of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight (CCIIO).

Cecilia was recently at Point32 Health where she worked on the Point32’s Medicaid ACO and also assisted with various aspects of M&A work at the plan.

Our hosts Aaron Holman, Instructor in the Department of Health Policy and Management and second year masters student Morgan Cooper provide an overview of what "FIM" means today, what was discussed during their recent annual conference and where Cecilia sees promise in the future of the movement.

Jason Helgerson is the founder of the Helgerson Solutions Group, as well as former Medicaid Director of both New York and Wisconsin. Jason’s group works in the health and social services space with a particular focus on bringing those two worlds together through effective value-based payment designs. While Medicaid Director under Governor Cuomo, Jason designed and oversaw NY DSRIP program, one of the largest and most audacious Medicaid reform efforts in American history.

Jason is also the host of Health2049 a podcast that explores how to use design strategy to fix big societal challenges, including those in health.

In this wide-ranging interview, our hosts Aaron Holman, Instructor in the Department of Health Policy and Management and second year graduate student Abigail Bartlett ask Jason about where he sees innovation coming from in value based payment (VBP) design, where work remains to be done to complete a transition to VBP, and how consultants may or not be helping this transition.