New Report Provides High-Impact Recommendations to Improve Prevention Policies in America

From the 29 January 2013 Trust for America’s Health news release 

Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) has released A Healthier America 2013: Strategies to Move from Sick Care to Health Care in Four Years – which provides high-impact recommendations to prioritize prevention and improve the health of Americans.

The Healthier America report outlines top policy approaches to respond to studies that show 1) more than half of Americans are living with one or more serious, chronic diseases, a majority of which could have been prevented, and 2) that today’s children could be on track to be the first in U.S. history to live shorter, less healthy lives than their parents.

“America’s health faces two possible futures,” said Gail Christopher, DN, President of the Board of TFAH and Vice President – Program Strategy of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.  “We can continue on the current path, resigning millions of Americans to health problems that could have been avoided or we invest in giving all Americans the opportunity to be healthier while saving billions in health care costs.  We owe it to our children to take the smarter way.”

The Healthier America report stresses the importance of taking innovative approaches and building partnerships with a wide range of sectors in order to be effective.  Some recommendations include:

• Advance the nation’s public health system by adopting a set of foundational capabilities, restructuring federal public health programs and ensuring sufficient, sustained funding to meet these defined foundational capabilities;
• Ensure insurance providers reimburse for effective prevention approaches both inside and outside the doctor’s office;
• Integrate community-based strategies into new health care models, such as by expanding Accountable Care Organizations into Accountable Care Communities;
• Work with nonprofit hospitals to identify the most effective ways they can expand support for prevention through community benefit programs;
• Maintain the Prevention and Public Health Fund and expand the Community Transformation Grant program so all Americans can benefit;
• Implement all of the recommendations for each of the 17 federal agency partners in the National Prevention Strategy; and
• Encourage all employers, including federal, state and local governments, to provide effective, evidence-based workplace wellness programs…..

Related articles

• New Report from HSC and Trust for America’s Health Calls for Federal Action to Close Achievement Gap by Addressing School Health (healthyschoolscampaign.typepad.com)
• Prevention urged to avoid a national health catastrophe (bizbeatblog.dallasnews.com)
• Comment: Take prevention seriously, make it a priority (timescolonist.com)
• Today’s children to live shorter lives (upi.com)