The Covid Pandemic-Can We Imagine a Better Health System

I am writing this foreword in the midst of the Covid pandemic. The first 3 articles directly or indirectly address salient features of the pandemic as it pertains to our health care system. The first multiauthored article pushes the boundaries and imagines a community-centered population health (CCPH) system that evolves out of the need to hire thousands of contact tracers during this Covid epidemic. The second outlines the political obstacles to implementing CCPH. One of the obstacles is how to pay for such as system. Policy makers and partisans alike have debated the merits of Single Payer. Paul Ginsburg analyzes the challenges to implementing such a system. This debate is especially salient today with the emergence of millions of newly uninsured Americans directly as a result of the Covid-19.

Community health workers are critical to CCPH implementation. Schleiff et al discuss their role in rural and urban areas. Woodcock, Geist, and Nguyen in separate articles analyze different aspects of scheduling, collaborative care, and physician integration. From an international perspective, Mullachery analyze different aspects of health reform in Brazil.

-Norbert I. Goldfield, MD

Editor