As a result, medical students are trained to view patients as nothing more than a grocery list of risks – a dehumanizing process (for both us and the patients) that may have limited utility. For both the patient and physician, the care of health operates at the level of the individual, not the population. Rather than understanding what is “normal” for the patient in front of us, we are trained to define “normal” relative to the population. Ideas like population-based normality and risk factors are tools for regulating public health and, as such, serve as a wonderful resources for institutions – the CDC, the WHO, governments, cities, etc. – because they can use these population-based averages to implement large-scale health interventions. If, for example, African Americans living in a particular zip code have higher rates of colon cancer and diabetes, the city government might team up with civil engineers and city planners to reduce the number of fast food chains and increase the number of grocery stores (read more on food deserts)