Population treatment for addictions

Addictive behaviors are major causes of chronic disease, premature death, and high health care costs. Such behaviors have not been treated seriously by health care systems, and this is a major reason why such systems face an unhealthy future. Treating addictions seriously requires complementing a traditional individual-patient paradigm with a population paradigm, an action paradigm with a stage paradigm, clinic practices with home-based practices, a clinician paradigm with a computer paradigm, and programs that focus on changing single behaviors with programs that focus on changing multiple behaviors