Patricia Rush, M.D., MBA - The Root of Chronic Disease & a New Hope for Health Disparity

In the 1990s, there were only two female hospital CEOs in the United States - one of them is our guest today! Her name is Patricia Rush, MD, MBA. In this episode, Dr. Rush takes us through the course of her 40 years as an internal medicine doctor. She has a fundamental conversation of hope – an opportunity to get to the root causes of physical & emotional suffering & completely revolutionizing the way that we look at chronic disease & health disparities. 

She discusses her career paths & what led her to create a different kind of primary care practice; The ASTONISHING relationship she found between patient experience & health; And lastly - new scientific findings – which can help us all create a new and better approach when it comes to getting to the root of chronic disease. 

She is the co-founder of The Center for Collaborative Study of Trauma, Health Equity, and Neurobiology (THEN). THEN was formed by 4 women health clinician-scholars in 2017 with the goal of designing and sharing a curriculum for medical science about childhood adversity, neurodevelopment, lifelong health and health equity. THEN provides lectures and workshops locally, nationally, and via video-conference. Through their website (www.thencenter.org), they hope to provide a series of short instructive videos, supported by an extensive Bibliography and Glossary: THEN CURRICULAR MODULES include:

• Core principles of System Science • Regulation and Dysregulation • Notice re Traumatic Content & Importance for Clinicians of Self Care • Life Course • Neurodevelopment • Trauma, Adversity, and Chronic Inflammation • Health Equity and the Trauma of Discrimination • Clinician Skills in Interviewing Patients and Building the Clinician-Patient Partnership • Therapeutic Principles in Developing a Regulatory Plan for Patients • Re-examination of typical models of key diseases

One of the most important medical discoveries of the past few decades was recently published in the scientific journal, Nature Medicine in December, 2019. This was a large-scale meta-analysis of data from more than 160,000 people across 54 long-term prospective studies & it PROVED that chronic inflammatory diseases have been recognized as the most significant cause of death in the world today. With more than 50% of all deaths being attributable to inflammation-related diseases, such as ischemic heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes mellitus, chronic kidney disease, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), auto-immune & neurodegenerative conditions. Evidence is emerging that the risk of developing chronic inflammation can be traced back to early development, and its effects are now known to persist throughout the life span to affect adulthood health - linking early childhood experience & chronic illness! This was one of Dr. Rush's greatest epiphanies - long before this recent article! Full Journal: (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337773457_Chronic_inflammation_in_the_etiology_of_disease_across_the_life_span)

You can find Dr. Rush's organization, THEN on Social Media:

Instagram: @then_center

Website:www.thencenter.org

Twitter: @then_center

YouTube: Launching Soon!

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