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Private Groups Collaborate To Forecast Alternative Futures for Public Health in 2030
Strategies
Recommended As Sound |
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Author: Roger Bernier, PhD, MPH A collaboration between the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Institute for Alternative Futures, and the Kresge Foundation has produced four recommendations for facing the future challenges of public health that are likely to be sound regardless of which future scenario emerges, according to the report from the group. Entitled “Public Health 2030—A Scenario Exploration” , the report constructs scenarios based on the forecasted behavior of six key drivers of public health. The purpose of these scenarios is to help public health agencies evaluate how well their organization’s strategies are likely to perform given these different futures to consider. Key Recommendation The key recommendation is to transform public health agencies into “health development agencies” with dedicated, sustainable, and sufficient funding. What does the concept of health development agency entail? According to the report, the current “programmatic approach” of public health does not address the major drivers of health. This is a serious shortcoming and amounts to saying that public health is not effectively enough addressing the major causes of health. If so, what are these drivers that need rethinking and suggest new approaches from public health? Future Trends/Drivers The drivers/trends identified by the sponsors of the report are: 1) chronic diseases and the likely to grow demand for prevention, management, and reduction of these conditions, 2) climate change and environmental threats and the extent to which public health is able to expand its capacities to deal with environmental disasters and disease outbreaks, 3) the extent to which the nation adopts a community prevention approach that is focused on addressing the structural drivers of illness and injury, 4) economics and public health financing, 5) injury and violence and the extent to which they come to be seen as preventable, and 6) technology and information system advances. Health Development Agencies The first recommendation to transform health agencies into “health development agencies” will entail continuing some of the current roles of health agencies but also taking on new ones. Perhaps the most striking is the call for health agencies to become the “chief health strategists” in the community and lead in creating a culture of health through the promotion of prevention strategies. To achieve the status of a true “health development agency” the report calls for health agencies to develop sustainable and sufficient funding, be evidence and best practice oriented, and provide trusted leadership in promoting prevention strategies. Chief Health Strategists The second recommendation calls for health development agencies to facilitate the transformation of the US health care system into one more oriented to prevention. This appears to be a recommendation to help reinforce a trend already evident in American society moving favorably to think in terms of population health. Dialogue Expertise Third, the report recommends building the capacity for dialogue about inclusion, opportunity, and equity. This is prompted by the recognition that racism and other beliefs or prejudices are part of the root causes of health inequity. Addressing them is needed to advance community vitality, according to the report.
The fourth and final
recommendation is another to create the capacity for dialogue, this
time with other non-health sectors which are needed to support
innovation. Basically, this recommendation calls for recognizing the
legitimate priorities and needs of other players in the health
system and learning lessons from other players to create innovations
in public health. ■ |
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