Dr. Anand Parekh on the Politics of Prevention and Why the Wins Are Always Invisible

On this episode of The Policy Stack, we’re joined by Dr. Anand Parekh. Dr. Parekh spent 20 years shaping federal health policy at HHS under George Bush and Barack Obama, then at the Bipartisan Policy Center, and just became the inaugural Chief Health Policy Officer at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. In this episode, he joins Lisa Bari to discuss the deepest contradiction in American healthcare: we spend 80% of our health dollars treating chronic disease, most of it preventable, while prevention receives a fraction of a fraction of the $5 trillion health budget, and the agencies responsible for it are now facing their steepest cuts in decades. [chronic disease prevention, healthcare policy, American healthcare, preventive care, public health funding, CDC budget cuts, Medicaid cuts, Make America Healthy Again, ACA preventive services, US Preventive Services Task Force, health policy podcast, prevention first, primary care, public health crisis, healthcare spending, social determinants of health, population health, federal health policy, HHS, health reform, chronic disease epidemic, cancer screening, mental health screening, substance use prevention, healthcare reform 2025, public health workforce, Anand Parekh, Lisa Bari, The Policy Stack, health policy interview, prevention paradox, healthcare costs, Medicaid policy, CDC funding, public health infrastructure, food policy, nutrition policy, health equity, social services healthcare, rural health, federally qualified health centers, SAMHSA, NIH funding, health policy news, US healthcare system, preventive medicine, disease prevention, healthcare podcast, health policy 2025, health policy 2026]