Creating a New Healthcare

In the last decade of a person’s life, we spend 7x what we spend on taking care of them in all the years that came before.

SEVEN TIMES!

That’s not only unbelievable, it’s unsustainable, particularly as our aging population grows and life span increases. So, if it’s not just about increasing life span, or the number of years someone lives, what is it about? For Dr. Tzipi Strauss, Founder and Director of the Sheba Longevity Center, it’s about increasing health span, that is the number of years a person lives healthily, without the need for significant intervention. 

The work Dr. Strauss and her team are doing focuses on longevity. It’s a step beyond lifestyle medicine in that they look across all body systems, and at the individual as a whole, to identify their biggest risk factors and what interventions they actually need, not just what the latest fad says. The emphasis on behavior change is significant, and that may be the holy grail, getting people to adopt these healthy changes permanently, but Dr. Strauss finds that when patients see their biological age and the impact of the decisions and choices they’ve been making, their motivation to change is different. It’s data driven.

Professor Strauss is a physician-scientist, pediatrician, and neonatologist, and a leading voice in the emerging field of longevity medicine. She is the Founder and Director of the Sheba Longevity Center—one of the first academic longevity centers embedded within a public healthcare system. Her work combines clinical innovation, research, and policy, aiming to transform longevity from a privilege into a scalable, evidence-based public health model.

Without intervention, in 2050, everyone in the US population will either have Alzheimer’s disease or be caring for someone with Alzheimer’s disease.

That’s the state of where we’re at with cognitive decline. Right now, if you reach the age of 85, your chances of developing cognitive decline are 1 in 2. That’s right, 50%. But, BUT, new research is helping us understand the hidden drivers of cognitive decline and creating hope at the same time. Because now that we understand the origin of risk for an individual, we can prescribe specific interventions to circumvent that risk and prevent the disease altogether.

This is the amazing work of James Maskell and Dr. Kristine Burke, my guests on the show today. Dr. Burke is Co-PI of the EVANTHEA Study, a clinical trial designed to look at the impact of a precision medicine approach to Alzheimer’s disease. The initial results are astounding – with intervention, 91% of participants saw improvement in cognitive function. That’s better than any drug, lifestyle medicine, or treatment protocol we have to date by a long shot. These two join me today to talk about what those hidden drivers are, how precision medicine can help, who’s going to pay for it, and why this is so critically important to society at large.

Dr. Kristine Burke is a triple board-certified precision medicine physician and the Founder and Executive Medical Director of True Health Center for Precision Medicine in Northern California. She is also the Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer of TruNeura who is advancing a scalable model for brain health that integrates clinical insight, data, and AI-supported decision tools.

James Maskell has spent the past decade innovating at the cross section of functional medicine and community. To that end, he created the Functional Forum, the world’s largest integrative medicine conference with record-setting participation online and growing physician communities around the world.

“Health doesn’t just happen within the four walls of the hospital.”

Or, at least, it shouldn’t have to. The work of our guest today, Dr. Eve Cunningham, and her team at Cadence, ensures that patients with chronic conditions can continue to live and thrive at home. Through remote patient monitoring but also behavioral support, medication titration, and relationship building, they ensure that patients understand their condition, are able to manage it effectively at home, and have another set of eyes looking out in case something starts to go awry. It’s technology driven, but it’s human focused. 

Eve is the Chief Medical Officer of Cadence, a medical group and remote care delivery system that supports health systems, clinicians, and patients in delivering care beyond the four walls of a hospital or clinic. Dr. Cunningham has spent the last 20 years deploying transformational health system programs at scale, leading large multidisciplinary medical groups, and integrating AI into clinical care at some of the largest non-profit health systems in the country. She is a board-certified OB-GYN and leader in virtual care, clinical AI, and clinician burnout.

We’re quick to blame genetics for our health and wellness issues, but the reality is that genetics only makes up 18% of our health destiny. That means the rest is up to us. 

Our guest today, Dr. Grant Zarzour, has seen that first hand in his own family. When his son was diagnosed with moderate autism, he and his wife refused to accept the predictions for his future. They dove head first into the data and in so doing, revolutionized not just their son’s life, but their own. Now a relentless proponent of diet, sleep, and exercise for physical and mental health, Dr. Zarzour feels like we all have a hand in our own destiny. We just have to commit. 

Dr. Zarzour is a practicing hip and knee surgeon in Mobile, AL.  He is the president of the largest orthopaedic practice in Alabama. While treating thousands of patients a year, Grant has developed a passion for preventive medicine. In 2024, he founded Sperity Health, which offers personalized longevity coaching to help its members improve their diet, exercise, and sleep with expert MD guidance. Sperity Health’s mission is to lower its member’s risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and dementia by up to 50% based on data and science.

Forty percent of the time, oncology care is not being delivered in concordance with guidelines. FORTY PERCENT!

As our guest today explains, that’s not because of bad doctors. It’s because oncology care changes rapidly and because almost eighty percent of patients are being seen by a community oncologist, a physician who is responsible for treating ALL types of cancer, instead of a specialist. How can we address that? Well, as Dr. Yousuf Zafar explains, there are really three options.

The patient travels to an NCI Cancer Center to seek a second opinion. This is obviously expensive and inconvenient and out of scope for many patients. 

The patient’s provider calls another oncologist in their network consult on the case. These relationships are critical but not universal.

We can formalize this provider-to-provider framework and have it paid for by a patient’s employer. This is the basis for AccessHope.

Today’s guest is a practicing oncologist and adjunct professor at Duke University, and chief medical officer at AccessHope, where he focuses on expanding access to expert cancer care for patients treated outside of academic centers. While National Cancer Institute Designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers deliver superior outcomes, they treat only 20 percent of cancer patients. Dr. Zafar is working to extend that expertise to the remaining 80 percent.