ABSTRACT

Systems engineer Dr. Maria Mayorga argues that to improve the medical decisions we make, we must apply a systems approach and consider a range of factors that influence health and wellbeing.

Maria E. Mayorga, Ph.D. is a professor of personalized medicine in the Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at NC State. She currently serves as interim director of the Operations Research Program. In 2019 she received the C.A. Anderson Award for contributions to teaching and was selected as a university faculty scholar for her academic leadership and research achievements. In 2021 she was selected as a provost faculty fellow at NC State. In 2022 she was named as a fellow of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers. Her research interests include predictive models in health care, health care operations management, emergency response, and humanitarian logistics. She has authored over 90 publications and currently serves on the editorial board several IISE and INFORMS journals. Learn more by visiting Dr. Mayorga's website. 

TRANSCRIPT

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

• Learn about precision health from the CDC: Your genes, behaviors (such as exercise and eating habits), and environment are all factors that affect your health. The goal of precision health is to protect your health by measuring these factors and acting on them. Interventions can be tailored to you, rather than using the same approach for everyone.

• Learn about social determinants of health from the US Dept of Health and Human Services: Social determinants of health (SDOH) are the conditions in the environments where people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age that affect a wide range of health, functioning, and quality-of-life outcomes and risks.