Welcome to “Paying it Forward,” a monthly interview series made possible by Piedmont Health. In this series, we hear from the folks at Piedmont about the importance of community health centers – and why they chose a career in community health.
This month, Aaron welcomes population health specialist Rui Ariyapala. Originally from New Zealand, he came to Chapel Hill after training in the UK and New Jersey; he now serves as Piedmont’s Associate Medical Officer, a role he’s held for about a year.
“I wanted a career that centered around problem solving, improving people’s lives in a meaningful way from a population health standpoint,” he says. “Not just treating the illness that’s in front of you, but looking upstream (and) influencing things from a grand scale.”
While Piedmont Health Services offers comprehensive care to patients on an individual, one-on-one basis, Ariyapala uses his background in population health to approach health care on a macro level – working to improve health across entire communities, or among groups of people within those communities.
“Population health (looks) at the whole population – and then what we try to do is (identify) patients within that population that are higher risk, (and try) to mitigate that,” he says.
In addition to that macro approach to health care, Ariyapala also tries to emphasize preventive care, encouraging people to make good lifestyle choices while healthy so they don’t find themselves struggling with preventable health issues in the future. He says his commitment to preventive care stemmed from a particular heart-attack patient he encountered in the UK.
“I’ll never forget him,” he says. “He was a 57-year-old gentleman, and it was my job to do all those social history questions, things like past medical history, surgical history, allergies – and I asked, ‘how often do you smoke?’ And he said, ‘I don’t anymore.’ ‘What do you mean anymore?’ ‘As of today, I’m never smoking ever again for the rest of my life…’
“So that got me thinking: when it comes to prevention, you (often) only think about it when (something bad) happens to you…and unfortunately by that time, there’s limited options that we can do. That was a really career defining moment, because I realized everything we do has to be (focusing) our energy on primary prevention.”
97.9 The Hill WCHL and Chapelboro.com are your headquarters for local news and local voices in Chapel Hill-Carrboro. Every weekday morning, 97.9 The Hill’s Aaron Keck chats with government officials, UNC scholars, business and nonprofit leaders, area musicians, and others in our community as they share their thoughts, their experience, and their expertise on the central issues of today. Click here to listen back to all of Aaron’s conversations – and tune in to “This Morning with Aaron Keck” at 7:30 a.m. on 97.9 The Hill to hear those conversations live.
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