INSIGHT & INSPIRATION FROM APHA’S 2012 MIDYEAR MEETING

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42 Survive All In This Friends Prevention, Strategies & Thrive Together For Health Opportunity & Equity for Health 2012 MIDYEAR MEETING CLOSING SESSION: ‘WE HAVE SOME VERY HARD CHOICES AHEAD’ The Charlotte meeting’s closing session started out with a bang. And hoots and hollers and tears of sheer joy. It was the same morning the Supreme Court released its ruling upholding nearly every provision of the Affordable Care Act. It was an absolutely joyous moment. But by no means did it secure public health’s future — “we have some very hard choices ahead,” said Lydia Ogden, the closing session’s first speaker and director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Health Reform Strategy, Policy and Coordination Office. There are strong forces driving change in the health system and public health needs to get prepared and adapt, Ogden said. For example, she said, about 10,000 Americans celebrate their 65th birthday every day — and that trend will continue for nearly the next two decades. “This is a profound change,” Ogden said. But perhaps an even bigger question comes down to spending and today’s new fiscal environment. With the feds borrowing about a third of every dollar it spends, Ogden said one of the most fundamental questions public health must ask itself is this: Is what we’re about to do worth it? “We owe it to the people we serve that what we’re doing is of the very highest value,” she told attendees. “We don’t do ourselves any favors by asserting that everything is worth doing.” Speaker Joseph Thompson, Arkansas state surgeon general and director of the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement, called on public health workers who organize and provide clinical health services to start figuring out how to bill for them. He said it’s going to be incredibly difficult to maintain revenue and funding supports for such services and “we have to have a viable future.” Thompson said he doesn’t use the term “public health” outside of public health circles, as the term often comes with preconceived notions that may cause important audiences to simply tune out. But that doesn’t mean people aren’t interested in joining the prevention cause. “We have new players who are thinking about denominator medicine,” Thompson said. “We don’t need to argue about whether it’s public health.” Among those new players is the private sector. Session speaker Cara McNulty, a senior group manager with Target tasked with improving the health and well-being of hundreds of thousands of employees, said even though Target isn’t in the business of health, it has a direct interest in keeping its workers healthy. And it needs public health’s help to do it. She called on attendees to invite business leaders to the table and educate them on the policy, systems and environmental changes that keep people healthy. “Health isn’t our primary business and we need your partnership,” Mc- Nulty said. “Help us understand what you’re trying to achieve because, believe me, as employers, we want to improve health.”
43 Survive All In This Friends Prevention, Strategies & Thrive Together For Health Opportunity & Equity for Health THE NEW PUBLIC HEALTH Is public health facing difficult and uncertain times? Yes. Does that mean we can’t move forward to improve community health and eliminate health inequities? Definitely not. But it will take a sincere dedication to adapting today’s public health practice to new constraints, resource levels and an era in which quality, efficiency and results reign. This isn’t to say that devastating public health budget cuts are justified or sensible, especially in a time when everyone is talking about curbing health care spending and preventable chronic diseases continue on an upward tick. These cuts most certainly threaten public health capacity as well as hard-fought gains in community health. But public health doesn’t easily back down from a challenge. Our history is packed with lifesaving success stories that were only possible thanks to public health’s keen ability to adapt and see the bigger picture — to see the wider connections that create the opportunities for some people, neighborhoods and communities to thrive against disease and poor health and for others to not. This public health framework for better health is beginning to permeate even deeper at the highest levels of government and health care systems. So even though today’s funding levels might not always reflect it, the role for public health and the opportunities for prevention and equity may actually be bigger than ever. We hope this report chronicling insights from APHA’s 2012 Midyear Meeting will help you navigate today’s tricky new territories. Public health works — but it’s up to us to prove it. To learn more about APHA meetings, visit www.apha.org/meetings.
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INSIGHT & INSPIRATION FROM APHA’S 2012 MIDYEAR MEETING

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