DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
Meeting of: Secretary's Council on National Health Promotion and Disease
Prevention Objectives for 2010
September 12, 2000, Proceedings
Agenda Item: Summary of Recommendations-Randolph Wykoff/ODPHP
DR. SATCHER: Now, it's about time for us to end, so I'm going to ask Dr. Wykoff to summarize the Council recommendations. Randy, are you ready for that?
DR. WYKOFF: Yes, thank you, Dr. Satcher. We had hoped today to come away with a few good ideas, and I think we have innumerable good ideas. It's been much more productive than we could even hope for. Many thanks to everyone who participated.
I think the two overarching messages that have come through today are -- and Dr. Mason started the day by saying this -- while we are clearly talking about national leadership, we are really talking about local implementation. What we really need to do is focus our efforts on how we build the coalitions and partnerships on the community level that can implement Healthy People and really make a difference in the country.
There have been a lot of recommendations. They've tended to fall into four broad areas. The first is outreach to new partners, finding new partners who have not been a part of the Healthy People dialogue in the past. The second is giving the needed skills and resources to our existing partners. The third is exploring new methods of outreach and communication. The fourth is developing new information, new research.
Just to touch briefly on some ideas in each of them without going into great detail -- as far as outreach to new partners, there's been a substantial discussion about the importance of reaching out to legislators, governors, attorneys general, not only to get them to carry forward the Healthy People message, but also, where appropriate, to reward and recognize those states that have done a good job, so that we give some feedback in an otherwise quiet environment.
It has been pointed out that we do need to reach beyond the state public health agencies to environmental health, drug abuse, and alcohol agencies, mental health agencies, and others. Clearly, a very important opportunity is out there for us to interact with the faith-based organizations and communities. We've had discussions about the importance of business and, particularly, building a dialogue and a linkage between the public health sector and the business sector. And the very real opportunity exists for us to work with groups like the Heart Association and others that have a national umbrella organization, but with fingers into almost every community in the country. They represent an important opportunity for us to communicate. So clearly, we see a lot of opportunity for us to take the Healthy People message to new partners.
As far as giving needed skills and resources to existing partners, there is clearly a need for us to figure out a way of communicating best practices. We heard about the Michigan WCHP program. How do we communicate that out? How do we let one community know what another one has done successfully? We need to explore how we do that, particularly using the Internet, which is an issue that we have discussed also today.
We clearly need to focus on the importance of community-based data, but we also need to help train folks in communities in how to conduct evaluations. We shouldn't just give them the data, but also the material and the capability to evaluate that data.
The point was made that we should take some of our traditional public health skills and teach them to non-public health leaders, leaders in the faith-based community and others. I think there's a lot of opportunity there.
As far as new methods for communication and outreach go, it's been said that we need to make sure that we communicate with a single voice and that we don't give multiple messages around the same issue, that we try to focus and coordinate our messages between the multiple groups that are interested, that we explore the use of the Internet and new technologies, that we reach out to new folks who can carry the health message, such as youth leaders. Tiger Woods and others have been mentioned.
Explore more effective ways of communicating with particular focus and attention on the Leading Health Indicators. That seems to be a repetitive point, that part of keeping the message simple is keeping it focused on the Leading Health Indicators, at least to begin with. Then the idea of whether we should try to interact and train a cadre of public health-trained journalists seems like one that has substantial potential for us.
As far as new information goes, we talked about the importance of community-based data. I don't think any of us have a clear idea of how we're going to get there, but I think we all recognize the importance of that. It has got to be a part of our ongoing dialogue. How are we going to collect data that is relevant to communities? Also pointed out earlier in the day was the importance of socioeconomic data, that we need to look at the broad cross-section of data that are available to us.
A piece of data that has been alluded to that we don't yet have, that would clearly be very important, is data on the cost-effectiveness of worksite health promotion programs. If we could develop those data, then we could clearly convince businesses that it is in their best interests to carry this new message forward. I think that's an important opportunity for us. And then, as was mentioned several times at the end, we need new information on how to evaluate the effectiveness of public health programs.
There's a lot here, a tremendous amount. It gets back to what we've said all along, that this is not something the federal government can or should try to do alone, that we really need to develop and enhance partnerships and coalitions to do it. But I think, speaking from one small part of the federal side of the equation, we've got a lot of work cut out for us here, and we look forward to digging into it.
So thanks, everybody. Thanks for your time, and Dr. Satcher, thanks for your leadership and guidance today.
DR. SATCHER: Very good. Thank you. That was quite a summary. Is there anything that he left out?
DR. WINDOM: Would he repeat that? I missed what he said.