Emory is leading the single most important revolutionary change to occur in medicine since physicians began probing what makes the body work: a new focus on health, not disease. Called “predictive health,” this approach uses science and technology to detect and stop disease before it starts, to understand what makes people healthy and keeps them that way.
Ken Brigham has spent much of his career studying ways to stop disease. Lately he’s fascinated with a more holistic approach to medicine: working to understand what makes humans healthy rather than trying to restore health once illness takes hold.
Brigham leads the Emory/Georgia Tech Predictive Health Initiative and its Center for Health Discovery and Well-Being at Emory Crawford Long Hospital in Midtown. Healthy people go there to get even healthier.
At the new center, Emory and Georgia Tech employees and the public will give their physical, medical, and lifestyle histories and take blood and plasma tests. The results will target predictors of health and illness, along with measures of inflammation, immunity, and metabolic health.
Based on those profiles and complex risk models, the center is creating personalized health programs designed to address individual risks. Participants may take part in clinical trials of new treatments for conditions such as diabetes and depression and will help validate age-old approaches such as meditation to relieve stress.
Brigham is concerned too about financing health care. He envisions a day when the burden of disease will decrease and when payers fund health care, not just disease care.
Your support will help Emory define and maintain health as well as treat disease.
