Colleen Briggs: Right now it feels like the entire system is focused on treating symptoms which we know costs more.

Couldn't we instead invest in prevention which we know costs less?

And I'll give you a concrete example. Diet related chronic conditions is one of the biggest cost drivers in the state of North Carolina. We know that we see 50,000 deaths every year in North Carolina around diet related chronic conditions. And that's going to cost the state another $65 billion over the next 5 years. And that's huge because we know it's also a drag on businesses that bear the brunt of a lot of these costs. And it's a drag on productivity for our workforce and others.

So here's the thing. We know what works though. We know that when you invest in lifestyle changes like improvements in diet and food that we actually see people improving their health and we're seeing lower costs.

So that's an example of something where we are committing all of our resources as a company to try to improve health through food. And we're going to do it in three ways.

We're trying to figure out how can we help people actually live healthier lives by eating healthier food. Right? So we're going to do first is how do we make it easier for an individual to eat healthier? And that's things like hosting teaching kitchens in a lot of our Beyond Blue neighborhood centers all across the state. And we also offer free nutrition counseling benefits so you can get that customized support you need.

The second is how do you scale this kind of food is medicine programs into the health care system. And so we are working on a program. We're one of the only payers in the country that offers food is medicine. So that's no cost to you food and a nutrition coach for our individuals who have type two diabetes. And we're actually seeing significant health improvements and cost savings.

Sougata Mukherjee: Wow.

Colleen Briggs: And then the third is how do we make sure that everyone no matter where you live has access to healthy food so that you can actually take these behaviors and actually adopt them because you need access to be able to do it. So these are the kind of things if we invest earlier we can actually improve health outcomes improve savings and get a system that works better for the state.

Sougata Mukherjee: That's fantastic. I mean we have we just have a minute left. Becky you asked the last question.

Becky Troyer: I um you know in terms of the impact and how what what sort of impact uh reports do you gather on how I know it's a long-term process. Um you'd rather have people eating healthy than buying weight loss drugs, right? Uh so how do you you know follow through to prove that what you did actually had an impact on say costs?

Colleen Briggs: It's a great question. So some of our programs that we measure, we look at things like let's say we're focused on a population with type two diabetes. We actually look at do we see blood sugar levels improve and the answer is yes in our programs. We also track do we see physical and mental health improvements and the answer is yes.

We see significant improvements when they engage in these kind of food as medicine programs. So improvements meaning fewer claims for those things or well it's actually reported data. So they come back and they actually show we're able to pull and we're able to see that their blood sugar levels are actually decreasing because they've engaged in this program. We're seeing you know we also have the quantitative data to be able to show that it does drive cost savings to your point. So we are seeing that it's delivering cost savings but then we also get qualitative feedback. People say they feel more confident, they feel healthier and they're seeing mental health improvements and that is already proven right when when you when you eat healthy.

Sougata Mukherjee: Thank you for joining us today. Um, go ahead. No, I was just going to say thanks. It was great. It was you. You were great. Thank you for tuning in in another edition of Bottomline Triangle. We'll be back again next time with more in-depth business news and analysis. So, make sure you like and subscribe.