Tony Tan Quotes

We should be concerned not only about the health of individual patients, but also the health of our entire society.

There is simply not enough money available to support a system in which the lion's share of expenditures is devoted to acute care, with virtually nothing being spent on preventive medicine, i.e. health care.

Care shouldn't start in the emergency room.

I think the problem with the country is that we operate on a sickness model, not a wellness model... Basically, we treat people who become ill. What we don't do is do a very good job in keeping them healthy in the first place...

In a successful health system, the proportion of per-capita health dollars used for home care, outpatient primary care, and preventive services should actually increase, not decrease, relative to those for acute hospital care.

A prevention-based society is one in which every institution, whether they're a hospital or a clinic, or a school, an employer or a faith-based organization, recognizes and embraces the role that it can play in improving health.

Community health centers do a great deal with limited resources. They provide critical medical care services to many who would otherwise have no other place to go or would end up in an emergency room.

We need to start training more primary health providers and fewer specialists. We will never be able to control health care costs unless we challenge the over-emphasis on medical research, specialists and technology and put more emphasis on delivering good, everyday basic medicine to those who now have none.

Since the reduction of risk factors is the scientific basis for primary prevention, the World Health Organization promotes the development of an integrated strategy for prevention of several diseases, rather than focusing on individual ones.

The power of community to create health is far greater than any physician, clinic or hospital.

We set up the promised clinic for the sick and wounded Masai.

The Medical Society of Sedgwick County, the Kansas Hospital Association and doctors have really done some remarkable work on wellness-related issues.

CDC is supporting community efforts by establishing competitive grants to support local programs to help individuals and families to get healthy and stay healthy.

Communities across the nation play an important role in leading the way toward healthier families, and the Affordable Care Act helps make prevention an important priority for every community.

I loved clinical practice, but in public health, you can impact more than one person at a time. The whole society is your patient.

I think we need more community health programs and we need to develop programs that are low-cost.

Strengthening our national network of Community Health Centers - one of the best kept secrets in medicine - can help counter America's growing access problem.

Vaccination and other essential preventive services must be delivered close within communities.

Scaling up community health workers and health system capacity must be a fundamental component of our efforts to achieve universal health coverage, which will be my topmost priority if elected as Director-General.

Protecting lives means reshaping national policies from a community healthcare angle.

How do you deliver the best possible and affordable health care to maximize health?

When I jump into something, I really do it to the fullest extent that my time and energy will allow me. I'm from Texas, and to see so many people that are obese and with disorders that are preventable. They haven't been shown or told. I'm really passionate about making sure my fellow countrymen are healthy. It's a shame.

The health of the people is really the foundation upon which all their happiness and all their powers as a state depend.

Treatment without prevention is simply unsustainable.

As 17th U.S. Surgeon General, I was privileged to serve as the nation's doctor. I focused much of my time on promoting proven programs and individual steps that lead to good health.