A Conversation With John Dreyzehner, MD, MPH, FACOEM, Commissioner, Tennessee Department of Health, pt. 1

by Justin B. Moore, PhD, MS

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to sit down with Tennessee Commissioner of Health, John Dreyzehner, MD, MPH, FACOEM to discuss his Primary Prevention Initiative. As he describes in this first segment of a three-part interview, the Tennessee Department of Health is placing a renewed focus on upstream causes of disease in collaboration with community and industry partners. As he outlines in his editorial “The Big Four: Using Primary Prevention to Drive Population Health,” which appears in the new issue of the Journal of Public Health Management & Practice, Tennessee is targeting the “Big Three + One behaviors” of physical inactivity, excessive caloric intake, tobacco and nicotine addiction, and other substance use disorders. I hope you will enjoy this enlightening first segment where Dr. Dreyzehner shares the origins and rationale for the Primary Prevention Initiative, and join us for the forthcoming two segments.


Justin B. Moore, PhD, MS is the Associate Editor of the Journal of Public Health Management & Practice and an Associate Professor in the Department of Family & Community Medicine of the Wake Forest School of Medicine at the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, NC, USA. Follow him at Twitter and Instagram. [Full Bio]