On May 12, President Obama met with employers and unions that have implemented innovative workplace wellness programs that showed success in improving the health of workers and reducing the rising rate of health care spending. It is important that we are actively identifying and examining prevention and disease management practices to find the most efficient, effective way to deliver quality care on a large scale. The PFCD has identified over 150 effective programs in, “Keeping America Healthy: A Catalog of Successful Programs.” This week PFCD Executive Director Ken Thorpe sent a letter to President Obama to further engage him in examining all the examples of where chronic disease prevention really does pay off.
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
June 10, 2009
Dear President Obama:
On May 12, 2009, you met with employers and unions that have implemented innovative workplace wellness programs that showed success in improving the health of workers and reducing the rising rate of health care spending. This is also a focus of the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease (PFCD) and we are actively identifying and examining prevention and disease management practices that lower health care costs and improve employees’ health.
As you know, there are numerous successful programs across the country – the key is to elevate these programs and find ways to replicate their success in other communities. To that end, in 2008, the PFCD identified nearly 150 of these diverse programs in its “Keeping America Healthy: A Catalog of Successful Programs.” The catalog examines programs across four settings - workplace, schools, community and health systems and categorizes as Programs that Work, Programs to Watch, or Programs with Promise based on nine "essential elements" for success.
Key findings include:
• Investments in high-impact, cost-effective population prevention and health improvement programs can increase the affordability of health care, while helping Americans live longer, healthier lives, thus contributing to higher productivity and increased economic performance.
• Prevention programs must be appropriately tailored to specific populations; targeting people who are at higher risk is more effective than programs that screen large segments of the population for a particular illness or condition without regard to risk.
• When directly tied to particular interventions or population groups, prevention can be cost-effective, even in the short term.
• Population health improvement programs range in scale and scope and rely on a variety of means to change behavior and improve health. Despite the variety in scope and scale, successful programs share common elements that appear essential to their success, including the coordination among stakeholders, empowerment and motivation of the target population and integration throughout the organization or community.
We hope that “Keeping America Healthy” will help to bring to light what is at stake for all Americans with this issue. We also hope that you will join PFCD as we look to support public and private policies within and outside our health care system to better promote and preserve the health and wellness of all Americans.
More detail about the programs can be found in the attached compendium and on the PFCD Web site at www.fightchronicdisease.org.
Sincerely,
Ken Thorpe, Ph.D. Executive Director, Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease; Chair, Dept. of Health Policy and Management, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University
cc: Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Chairman of the Health, Education,
Labor, and Pensions Committee; Senator Mike Enzi, Ranking Member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee; Senator Max Baucus, Chairman of the Finance Committee; Senator Chuck Grassley, Ranking Member of the Finance Committee; Senator Kent Conrad, Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee; Senator Judd Gregg, Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee; Representative Charles Rangel, Chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee; Representative Dave Camp, Ranking Member of the House Ways & Means Committee; Representative Henry Waxman; Chairman of the Energy & Commerce Committee; Representative Joe Barton, Ranking Member of the House Energy & Commerce Committee