Adapting a Publicly Focused Individual Health-Care Model to Cybersecurity

Sometimes, we all need a little help from our friends -many of us, and especially businesses of various kinds know doctors, lawyers, accountants, building contractors, mortgage brokers, and real estate agents that we can turn to for our needs in the areas of expertise of those individuals.But how many organizations outside Fortune 500 companies in need of computer security expertise know qualified professionals that they can turn to?And even if such professionals could be identified, how would one gauge their level of expertise or effectiveness?Unlike every other professional domain mentioned above, there is no state or national computer security licensing board that tracks complaints or disciplinary actions against computer professionals.Indeed, there is limited professional licensing in computer security, so there are no disciplinary actions against computer professionals guilty of negligence.Public health is "The science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private communities, and individuals."[1] Public health studies a variety of indicators of the health of societies.The methods it uses to effect change are typically sweeping such as national public communication programs to address smoking, promotion of vaccinations during a pandemic or flu season, ensuring clean water, regulations about the addition of iodine or fluoride to table salt, etc.... Population health or community health extend this notion to vulnerable subpopulations, either geographic, ethnic, or otherwise.Writing in The New Yorker [2] in 2021, Atul Gawande discussed the success of a public health program created in Costa Rica by a lvaro Salas Chaves, a physician, with the support of the Costa Rican Ministry of Health.Salas's program stands in stark contrast to other countries that spend substantially more on medical care delivery than Costa Rica does, with much lower success, by virtually any measure.Gawande's piece also notes the limits of traditional public health methods in improving public health.What Gwande discovered is that a combination of traditional public health methods and individual health care was substantially more effective at improving overall public health.To be clear, Costa Rica's approach to the integration of individual health care for public health benefit is not the traditional approach to individual health care used in the United States and other, similarly wealthy nations by providing individual care primarily only to those who can afford it.This approach is individual health care that is "braided" with and closely aligned with public health.As Gawande describes, every Costa Rican has an individual, local, primary health care team, including a physician, a nurse, and trained community health workers.This team would visit every household at least once per year, with more frequents assigned based on established patient vulnerability (an insight from the public health side), such as elderly people living alone, or with chronic disease.Medical records and public health targets are also shared and aligned between individual and public health organizations.