Post a Comment On: Health-related Insurance in Connecticut

Sharing some recently reported information from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) on steps to improve the nation’s health. The RWJF convened the Commission to Build a Healthier America in 2008. It’s Co-Chair Mark McClellan, MD, PhD made this point in a talk last week:

“To become healthier and reduce the growth of public and private spending on medical care, we must create a seismic shift in how we approach and the actions we take.”

The Commission full report can be found here.

I have heard him speak at different occasions, one of which was several years ago when he was head of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Mark is a sharp and insightful person and I can state the above words are important. He also indicated in the talk:

“As a country we need to expand our focus to address how to stay health in the first place.”

To accomplish this he believes the “critical needed changes include”:
● Improve opportunities [for people] to make healthy decisions where we live, learn, work.
● Improve access to a good education, jobs, and health care.
● Work across sectors, collaborating to improve the health of all Americans.
● Make investing in America’s youngest children a high priorit.
● Fundamentally change how we revitalize neighborhoods, full integrating health into community development.
● Adopt new health “vital signs” to access noin-medical indicators for health such as jobs, income, housing, transportation and access to healthy food.
● Create incentives tied to reimbursement for health professional and health care institutions to address non-medical factors that affect health.