Author: Leif Gannmatzen

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2026

ZealCare’s Dr. Ralph Snyderman Featured on the CLEARly Beneficial Podcast: Fixing Healthcare While the Plane Is Flying

ZealCare’s Dr. Ralph Snyderman Featured on the CLEARly Beneficial Podcast: Fixing Healthcare While the Plane Is Flying

Wide-ranging conversation covers the chronic disease epidemic, value-based care, and a whole-health model being built from scratch in Arkansas
 
ZealCare Founder and Board Chair Dr. Ralph Snyderman joined Vincent Catalano on Season 2, Episode 16 of the CLEARly Beneficial Podcast for a direct conversation about what fixing American healthcare actually requires.
 
The episode, titled “Fixing Healthcare While the Plane Is Flying,” covers the structural reasons chronic disease has become an epidemic, what the transition to value-based care demands in practice, and a promising whole-health model taking shape in Arkansas.

WHAT THE CONVERSATION COVERS

  • Why fee-for-service created — and continues to sustain — the chronic disease epidemic
  • How 5% of patients drive 50% of all healthcare costs, and what proactive care does about it
  • Why the shift to value-based care is harder than it looks — and what it actually requires
  • What CMS is doing right, and why it still isn’t enough
  • The cancer survivorship program Duke couldn’t afford to keep running — and what that reveals
  • How Alice Walton and the Heartland Whole Health Institute are building a whole-health system from scratch in Arkansas
“American healthcare was built around treating disease episodes, and that design has consequences,” said Dr. Snyderman. “The path forward requires a system that is proactive, personalized, and aligned around keeping people healthy — not one that profits from managing illness.”

WHO SHOULD LISTEN

The conversation is most relevant for benefits managers, HR professionals, and employer decision-makers navigating healthcare costs. It is equally valuable for anyone working in care delivery, policy, or health plan strategy who wants an unvarnished view of where the system stands and where it needs to go.

WATCH OR READ THE FULL EPISODE

📖 Read on Substack: S2E16 on Substack

ABOUT ZEALCARE

ZealCare is a proactive chronic disease management company dedicated to empowering people with complex chronic conditions to live the life they want. Working with health plans, employers, and health systems, ZealCare delivers personalized, whole-person care at scale.
 
Learn more at zealcare.com.
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news
2026

ZealCare Founder & Board Chair Dr. Ralph Snyderman Named to Pearl Health’s 2026 Top 50 Value-Based Care Thinkers

ZealCare Founder & Board Chair Dr. Ralph Snyderman Named to Pearl Health’s 2026 Top 50 Value-Based Care Thinkers

Recognition honors leaders driving measurable progress in value-based care across the country
 
ZealCare announced today that Founder and Board Chair Dr. Ralph Snyderman has been named to Pearl Health’s 2026 Top 50 Value-Based Care Thinkers list. The recognition places him among the country’s most influential leaders in advancing accountable, outcomes-driven care.
 
Now in its fifth year, the Top 50 Value-Based Care Thinkers report evaluated more than 200 nominees across four dimensions: demonstrated impact, innovation, execution at scale, and narrative influence. This year’s cohort was the largest and most diverse to date.

A PIONEER OF PERSONAL MEDICINE

Dr. Snyderman has spent decades making the case that a reactive, disease-centered healthcare system is both clinically inadequate and financially unsustainable. The Association of American Medical Colleges has called him the “father of personalized medicine.”
 
From 1989 to 2004, Dr. Snyderman served as Chancellor for Health Affairs and Dean of the School of Medicine at Duke University. During that time, he built the Duke University Health System into one of the country’s most successful integrated academic health systems and served as its founding President and CEO.
 
Through the Duke Center for Personalized Health Care, he developed the Personalized Health Planning framework, a model that anticipated core principles now driving value-based care nationally. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has authored nearly 400 manuscripts.
 
Dr. Snyderman co-founded ZealCare to operationalize those principles building a proactive, personalized approach to chronic disease management that works at population scale.

WHAT THIS RECOGNITION REFLECTS

Pearl Health’s 2026 report is explicit: honorees were selected for their ability to deliver results, not for visibility alone. Credibility in value-based care, the report concludes, now comes from execution.
 
For Dr. Snyderman, that credibility was built over a career. This recognition reflects both his foundational contributions to the field and the work underway at ZealCare to turn those contributions into measurable outcomes for patients and payers.
 
“This recognition is a reflection of how far the field has come and a reminder of who helped get it here,” remarked Cassie Wallace, President of ZealCare

ABOUT ZEALCARE

ZealCare is a proactive chronic disease management company dedicated to empowering people with complex chronic conditions to live the life they want. Working with health plans, employers, and health systems, ZealCare delivers personalized, whole-person care at scale.
 
Learn more at zealcare.com. Download the full Pearl Health 2026 Top 50 VBC Thinkers Report at pearlhealth.com.
Categories
news
2025

“VA pilot studies teach veterans healing value of better food choices” – USA Today

"VA pilot studies teach veterans healing value of better food choices" - USA Today

By Cari Shane. Nov. 6, 2025
 
View original article at www.usatoday.com
Categories
news
2025

ZealCare and Reinvestment Partners Unite to Improve Health Outcomes Through ‘Food Is Medicine’ for Patients with Heart Failure

ZealCare and Reinvestment Partners Unite to Improve Health Outcomes Through 'Food Is Medicine' for Patients with Heart Failure

For release: February 26, 2025
Senior-Couple-Eating-Salad-Outdoors
Durham, N.C.
Reinvestment Partners, a Durham-based nonprofit organization focused on creating and sustaining healthy communities, has partnered with ZealCare, an innovative behavior change health coaching and support company enabling and supporting the healthy lifestyles needed for optimal clinical outcomes, to conduct one of the largest randomized controlled studies to date of an intensive Food is Medicine intervention. The study, funded by Reinvestment Partners, will examine the impact of the Reinvestment Partners Eat Well program combined with ZealCare health coaching on the health of patients with congestive heart failure (CHF).
 
Reinvestment Partners is a leader in the Food is Medicine movement, and its Eat Well initiative is the largest produce prescription program in the country. Eat Well uses prepaid debit cards and tech-enabled systems to provide patients at risk of food insecurity with funds to purchase fruits and vegetables at major food retailers. Since it was launched in 2018, the Eat Well program has served more than 150,000 patients across the country and allowed participants to spend over $29 million on fruits and vegetables.
 
ZealCare empowers patients with multiple complex conditions to become engaged and effective in self-managing their health, resulting in improved outcomes and significant cost savings reflected in a validated 6:1 ROI. The 12-month program is delivered virtually by certified health coaches on an AI-enabled platform to dose engagement and intensity, and combines personal health planning, peer-to-peer group sessions, a whole-person curriculum inclusive of mindfulness meditation and stress reduction, and social determinants of health screening and response. The model focuses on high-risk patients with cardiometabolic conditions, like CHF, where behavior change, and clinical plan adherence can markedly improve patient outcomes.
 
“This partnership is a testament to the strength of ZealCare’s innovative lifestyle behavior change approach and Reinvestment Partners’ commitment to create solutions that drive impact within the community, to improve health outcomes and decrease overall health care costs in patients with serious chronic diseases,” noted Dr. Ralph Snyderman, ZealCare’s founder.
 
“Reinvestment Partners’ Eat Well program enables patients to buy healthy fruits and vegetables that they need and want. By coordinating healthy food with health coaching, we will have a greater impact on patient outcomes than either intervention alone. Our goal is to help patients with CHF to live healthier lives,” said Peter Skillern, CEO of Reinvestment Partners.
 
About Reinvestment Partners
Reinvestment Partners is a Durham-based nonprofit organization whose mission is to foster healthy and just communities by empowering people, improving places, and influencing policy. The organization addresses the problems of poverty and social injustice in the areas of food, housing, community development, health, and financial services. Learn more at https://reinvestmentpartners.org/
 
About ZealCare
ZealCare is a Durham-based technology-enabled personalized health company that transforms chronic disease care management through patient empowerment. ZealCare brings a new approach to healthcare, focusing on technology-enabled, personalized, integrative care that is grounded in evidence, focused on needed behavior change. The ZealCare program has demonstrated significant cost stavings, improved outcomes and high participant satisfaction. Founded in late 2020, the ZealCare patient-centered model is built upon decades of research conducted by Founder Ralph Snyderman, M.D., and Co-Founder Connor Drake, PhD, at Duke University School of Medicine, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and local federally qualified care clinics. The validated care model builds deep patient engagement through personalized health planning and goal setting with integrative health coaching. With its robust team and extensive evidence base, ZealCare is a significant force in transforming the healthcare landscape, while staying true to its mission to empower people with complex chronic conditions to live the life they want!
Learn more at www.zealcare.com.