February 2013 – October 2014

Wellthcare

A search for community-oriented innovation

My projects began in 2013 when I was the Physician Editor of TEDMED. I was motivated by three things: it was clear that our approach to health — especially health care — was increasingly unsustainable and new ideas were needed; most innovations in health seemed to lack any appreciation of people’s social and cultural contexts, especially that health may not be their priority; and there was evidence that communities with ‘social capital’ tended to be healthier. Under the name of Wellthcare, I went in search of new approaches to health that were sensitive to people’s priorities and mindful of protecting and building social capital.

Wellthcare

Publications

  • The Wellthcare Manifesto

Related Posts

  • An Hour That Changed My Life 

    Pritpal S Tamber | May 15, 2025
    S. Leonard Syme, who died in January, changed how we understand health and guided me to the importance of control, agency and power

  • The End Of Wellthcare

    Pritpal S Tamber | October 25, 2014
    Why I decided to stop using the term ‘Wellthcare’ and what I am doing next

  • Wellthcare is Joined by Nine Organisations

    Pritpal S Tamber | June 18, 2014
    And we decided to call ourselves the ‘Creating Health Incubation Group’

  • How Doctors’ Failures Will Lead to Social Unrest

    Pritpal S Tamber | May 28, 2014
    Reflecting on talks by Pippa Malmgren, an economist, and Des Gorman, the Executive Chair of Health Workforce New Zealand

  • Seeing Beyond the Bio-Medical Model

    Pritpal S Tamber | May 15, 2014
    Re-publishing Jamie Harvie’s excellent foreword to the Democracy Collaborative’s report, Hospitals Building Healthier Communities

  • Creating a Parallel System to Health Care

    Pritpal S Tamber | April 23, 2014
    Reflecting on the work of Dr Lim Boon Keng of the late 1800s in Singapore to improve people’s health by improving their social conditions – and what it tells us for today

  • Creating Health: Avoiding the Trap of Lazy Superiority

    Pritpal S Tamber | April 10, 2014
    A mea culpa

  • Medicaid as a Catalyst for Community 

    Lori Peterson and Pritpal S Tamber | March 28, 2014
    An overview of the extraordinary work of Alex Briscoe, Director of Alameda County’s Health Care Services Agency

  • Frugal Innovation: Learning from the Developing World

    Pritpal S Tamber | March 14, 2014
    A re-posting of Charles Leadbeater’s chapter in The Alpine Review that tomorrow’s health systems require us to learn from the developing world

  • Why Have a Manifesto? 

    Pritpal S Tamber | March 3, 2014
    To bring together the ideas that we’ve discussed in Wellthcare into a brief, accessible format