To do this, you have to stop asking what can you do for people defined by their illnesses. You have to come at it from the other direction. We can make a real impact on their health by providing mammograms and blood pressure screening and colon cancer detection. We need to think differently about the prevention of disease than we do about disease management. Doctors on the whole are focused on treating illness.
Nobody takes responsibility for prevention.
Certainly no one takes responsibility for prevention for a whole community. At Montefiore, Shenson worked with AIDS patients and an inner-city population. His eyes were opened to the health implications of urban deprivation. In 1988, he joined the faculty of the Department of epidemiology and social medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where he is an assistant professor and now has an appointment in the School of Medicine as well.