On December 11, 2008, Partnership for Prevention will release its recommendations to make prevention an important part of national health reform. The recommendations build on Partnership’s “Principles for Prevention-Centered Health Reform,” which outline core principles for increasing the emphasis on health promotion and disease prevention in a reformed health system.

The principles call on policy makers to ensure that both clinical preventive services and community preventive services play an important role in a reformed health system and that policy makers develop and track system performance standards related to prevention.

For more information on the Principles or to sign up to receive the recommendations please email Jud Richland at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Partnership has commissioned several of the nation’s most prominent prevention policy experts to identify policy options Congress should consider to advance the nation’s prevention goals. The papers will address a broad range of issues related both to clinical preventive services and to community preventive services.

Resources:

• Executive Summary: Principles for Prevention-Centered Health Reform (pdf)
• Principles for Prevention-Centered Health Reform (pdf)
• Prevention Policy Options Being Examined by Partnership for Prevention
• Speech to the American Health Care Congress by Partnership for Prevention President, John Clymer, on the Need for Prevention-Centered Health Reform (pdf)

Prevention Policy Options Being Examined by Partnership for Prevention:

• On behalf of Partnership’s National Commission on Prevention Priorities, Ashley Coffield from Partnership for Prevention and Mike Maciosek from the HealthPartners Research Foundation examine how increasing the delivery of evidence-based clinical preventive services will affect national health care spending.
  
  
• Health systems and medical practices have the potential to greatly increase the delivery of clinical preventive services. Researchers Kurt Stange from Case Western Reserve University and Steven Woolf from Virginia Commonwealth University address policy options to encourage systems-based approaches to increase delivery of high-value clinical preventive services.
  
  
• RTI researcher Douglas Kamerow examines optimal strategies for designing high-impact, affordable benefits packages of preventive services.
  
  
• Dr. Kamerow also reviews strategies Medicare can employ to increase the delivery of preventive services to older Americans.
  
  
• The nation’s state and local public health departments serve as the foundation for promoting and delivering community preventive services. Los Angeles County Director of Health Jonathan Fielding discusses strategies for strengthening the role of public health departments in achieving the nation’s prevention objectives.
  
  
• The business sector also has a critical role to play in delivering worksite-based health promotion and disease prevention services to America’s workers. Ron Goetzel from Emory University reviews policies that policymakers can enact to encourage employers to provide cost-effective worksite health promotion programs.
  
  
• Joe Thompson from the University of Arkansas presents innovative policy approaches for improving the health of children, primarily by preventing problems associated with tobacco and obesity.
  
  
• An important challenge for policymakers is understanding how new policies in areas outside of health care, such as transportation, employment, and education, affect the health of Americans. Jonathan Fielding discusses an innovative policy approach for assessing the health impact of important, new national policies before they are enacted.
  
  
• Finally Larry Lewin, founder of The Lewin Group health consulting firm, presents policy options for reorganizing federal agencies so that they are best positioned to implement the policies that have been identified to improve health promotion and disease prevention efforts.

Together, this series of prevention policy papers offers policymakers a road map for steering the nation toward high-impact policies to strengthen the nation’s health promotion and disease prevention efforts.