The system for providing goods and services that **diagnose and treat medical diseases**.
Ideally the medical system returns sick people toward health and delays the progression of illness to maintain wellbeing as far as possible within a given social-economic-political system.
>I am trained as a medical doctor, having had board certifications in both internal medicine and emergency medicine. I am all for expertise and timely high quality care for the sick and injured.
Too often the medical system is conflated (for various motives) with health and systems of health.
Of course a holistic approach is required, but that is different than expecting medically trained professionals to provide comprehensive public health and behavioral health services.
Of recent it conflated with behavioral health--again an expansion with unclear but likely financial motives.
Preventive Services are best overseen at the population level by (properly funded) public health services. Someone needs to be accountable for the prevention of illness in the entire population. Doctors only see "patients" who "visit" them from time to time.
Mental Health is best seen as a community system that involved family, friends, neighbors, school and work place.
Medical professionals, of course, need training in preventive health and mental health, including Substance Use Services. They are not the primary source of these services--they cannot be provided by medical professionals at the best quality nor at an affordable price.
>I will suggest that if we want to relocalize health we will want to relocalize the medical system, the behavioral health services, and the public health services to the extent possible. These are three different by highly interdependent services.
The social determinants of health are mostly local determinants of health and blanket policies at the state or federal level are partial at best and sometimes quite wasteful.