Hello Readers!

Today, the Public Health Bugle and many other health organizations, media outlets, academic institutions attended a conference call to launch this years “Health Country Rankings.” Below is the press release explaining what these rankings are and how they affect us all. I will publish the recording of today’s conference call answer/question session in the near future. Also, HERE was last year’s exclusive interview.

--Healthiest and Least Healthy Counties Ranked in Every State–

(source: County Health Rankings, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the University of Wisconsin)

2012 County Health Rankings Show What Influences How Healthy Residents Are, How Long They Live

 Madison, WI and Princeton, NJ (April 3, 2012) – More than 3,000 counties and the District of Columbia can compare how healthy their residents are and how long they live with the 2012 County Health Rankings, released today. The Rankings are an annual check-up that highlights the healthiest and least healthy counties in every state, as well as those factors that influence health, outside of the doctor’s office. The Rankings highlight the importance of critical factors such as education rates, income levels, and access to healthy foods, as well as access to medical care, in influencing how long and how well people live. Now in their third year, the Rankings are increasingly being used by community leaders to help them identify challenges and take action in a variety of ways to improve residents’ health.

Published on-line at www.countyhealthrankings.org by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), the Rankings assess the overall health of nearly every county in all 50 states, using a standard way to measure how healthy people are and how long they live. The Rankings consider factors that affect people’s health within four categories: health behavior, clinical care, social and economic factors, and physical environment. This year’s Rankings include several new measures, such as how many fast food restaurants are in a county and levels of physical inactivity among residents. Graphs illustrating premature death trends over 10 years are new as well.

“The County Health Rankings show us that much of what influences our health happens outside of the doctor’s office. In fact, where we live, learn, work and play has a big role in determining how healthy we are and how long we live,” said Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, M.D., M.B.A., president and CEO of RWJF. “The good news is that businesses, health care providers, government, consumers and community leaders are already joining forces in communities across the nation to change some of the gaps that the Rankings highlight.”

The Rankings show that, within states and across the nation, there are big differences in health and the factors that influence health.

Hello Readers!

I was contacted by a representative at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, about a current project they just completed – The County Health Rankings. The project is an “annual health check-up highlights healthiest and least healthy counties in every state.” This type of work is a great example of how Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) influence policy change within one’s local community. I’ve linked to the original article and provided an excerpt below.

Also, I will post interview questions that I’ve asked a representative from the project later in the week.

The following article is from the The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the complete article can be accessed HERE:

“A new set of reports rank the overall health of nearly every county in the nation. In its second year, the County Health Rankings continue to confirm the critical role that factors such as education, jobs, income, environment and access to health care play in how healthy people are and how long they live.

Published online at www.countyhealthrankings.org by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Rankings allow people to see how their county compares with others in their state on multiple health factors and against national benchmarks. It is the only tool of its kind that measures the overall health of counties in all 50 states.”

Hello readers!

I wanted to take the time to update everyone on some interesting discussions, research findings, and policies in the U.S. health care system.

1) Fixing America’s Health Care Reimbursement System (source: The Health Care Blog)

A tempest is brewing in physician circles over how doctors are paid. But calming it will require more than just the action of physicians. It will demand the attention and influence of businesses and patient advocates who, outside the health industrial complex, bear the brunt of the nation’s skyrocketing health care costs.

Much responsibility for America’s inequitable health care payment system and its cost crisis is embedded in the informal but symbiotic relationship between the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the American Medical Association’s Relative Value System Update Committee — also known as the RUC.

2) Six slides outlining “childhood obesity by the numbers” (source: Slate Hive, referred by Simoleon Sense)

You may need to scroll down to click on the directional arrows to see all 6 slides.

3) Town Hall Forum: GHI Executive Director Lois Quam on the Future of the Global Health Initiative (video and transcript source: Kaiser Family Foundation)

On March 1, 2011, the Kaiser Family Foundation hosted a town hall-style forum with Lois Quam, the newly appointed Executive Director of the Global Health Initiative (GHI), to listen to global health community perspectives on the progress of the initiative to date and discuss what the future of the U.S. global health policy might look like. The hour-long session was moderated by Jen Kates, Vice President and Director, Global Health & HIV Policy, Kaiser Family Foundation. During the town hall session, Director Quam took questions from the audience.

The Global Health Initiative (GHI), launched by the Obama Administration in May 2009, is an effort by the United States government to coordinate most of its global health activities under one umbrella. The GHI builds upon existing U.S. programs and expands work in other areas, focusing on improving health outcomes in the areas of HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, neglected tropical diseases, maternal health, child health, nutrition, and family planning and reproductive health, as well as strengthening underlying health systems

Original Post

(source: The Health Care Blog)

One of my favorite health care stories is about Jerry Reeves MD, who in 2004 took the helm of a 300,000 life health plan in Las Vegas, including about 110,000 union members, and drove so much waste out of that system – without reducing benefits and while improving quality – that the union gave its members a 60 cent/hour raise. There was no magic here. It was a straightforward and rigorously managed combination of proven approaches.

Dr. Reeves’ work betrayed the lie that tremendous health care costs are inevitable. To a large degree, the nation’s major health plans abetted this perception when they effectively stopped doing medical management in 1999. (Most have recently begun managing again in earnest.) The result was an explosion in cost – 4 times general inflation and 3.5 times workers earnings between 1999 and 2009 – that has priced a growing percentage of individual and corporate purchasers out of the health coverage market, dangerously destabilizing the health care marketplace and the larger US economy. In 2008, PriceWaterhouse Coopers published a scathing analysis suggesting that $1.2 trillion (55%) of the $2.2 trillion health care spend at that time was waste.

Original Article

(source: The Economist)

Governments are increasingly turning to private insurance in order to widen access to health care and make it more efficient. Are they expecting too much?

OTTO VON BISMARCK believed that the ordinary worker “is unsure if he will always be healthy and he can predict that he will reach old age and be unable to work. If he falls into poverty, and be that only through prolonged illness, he will find himself totally helpless.” So in 1883 Germany’s Iron Chancellor introduced a health-insurance law that required both companies and workers to contribute to the costs of care.