S5 - E22.1 - Healthy Livers, Healthy Lives: Why MASHville Needs This Coalition

Surfing the MASH Tsunami

Healthy Livers, Healthy Lives Chair Jeff Lazarus joins Jörn Schattenberg, Louise Campbell and Roger Green to discuss how the coalition came into existence and to describe two initiatves aimed at increasing early screening.
Jeff starts the conversation by describing the "bit of a bubble" in which the MASLD community lives: great news and lots of excitement within, but very limited exposure to related metabolic specialties (endocrinology, primary care, cardiology) and limited awareness among the people and organizations that shape public health policy.
Jörn adds that Jeff has been working for the last 4-5 years to create a multi-stakeholder coalition to promote liver disease to relevant professional societies and public health policy shapers. Jeff notes that patient advocates, clinicians, and professional societies each have a pivotal role to play in advancing liver care, particularly MASLD care.
Healthy Livers, Healthy Lives is a coalition of four major professional organizations (AASLD, ALEH, APASL, and EASL) along with other partners, like the Indian National Association for the Study of the Liver (INASL), to raise awareness within the liver field and also other metabolic specialties. Jeff describes it as "really trying to be an open, transparent, engaging, ambitious and aspirational coalition" with a light structure and just a few areas of focus over the next year: World LIver Day on April 19, the World Health Assembly, and the UN General Assembly.
Louise asks about efforts to promote early screening that will help patients get care earlier in their disease progression. Jeff mentions two: a project to "double the diagnosis" over the next 3-4 years, and another project to identify all the concomitant conditions with sufficient cost of disease to merit screening everyone in that group. The latter will provide the kind of data to which public policy makers respond best.