Topic: What Makes a Healthy Community?
How social, economic and environmental factors play a powerful role in determining our health
Friday, July 30, 2010
Hosted by George Pernsteiner & Cheryl Fischer Read the dinner and discussion summary here
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Chris Kabel has selected the following report and discussion questions for your consideration:
Overcoming Obstacles to Health - Chapter 1. Report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to the Commission to Build a Healthier America
Differences in health along social, economic and racial or ethnic lines are known as "health disparities" or "social disparities in health." New research presented in this fascinating report indicates that these disparities are avoidable, and require looking beyond the medical care system to acknowledge and address the many other factors that also can determine a person's health. Doing so will allow the United States to reach its full health, educational and economic potential.
For those of you wishing to learn more, here is the full report.
Here are a few questions to kick-start our conversation on July 30.
- If you had $1 million available to improve the health of your community, how would you allocate it to achieve the most impact? Based on the articles, how would you divide this resource among items like K-12 education, medical care, health-promoting community design, early childhood development and other programs?
- Why do you feel it is so difficult for policy makers to move resources from the downstream provision of medical treatment towards upstream community-based primary prevention?
- Health disparities are often perceived as being solely the problem of those populations who are at the bottom of most health status indicators. How do health disparities affect all Americans?
- What roles do the responsibilities of the individual, corporations, governments and the community play in determining health status?
Because together, we can do more.