Dear Friends for Social Justice:
Will you join JALSA in supporting food justice and environmental health by signing onto the Prevention Trust?
Through JALSA’s work on food and the connection between safe environments and healthy families, one thing has become clear. Insurers, providers and the state need to invest in prevention programs that will increase availability of healthy sustainable food, improve air quality, and increase opportunities for exercise and access to green spaces. These measures will help prevent disease before it starts, ensuring healthier communities and lower health care costs for all of us.
Below is information about a sign-on letter urging the state to invest in prevention measures as part of Health Care Cost Control. They need clergy, business, municipal, academic and health care leaders to sign on. Will you?
Email jalsaoffice@gmail.com or follow this link to sign onto the letter.
Look below for more information and content of the letter:
This effort is being led jointly by Massachusetts Public Health Association, Health Care for All, Health Resources in Action, and the Boston Public Health Commission.
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Dear President Murray and Speaker DeLeo:
In the past several months, we have heard a growing chorus of leaders calling for the Commonwealth to move forward with legislation to reform our system of health care payment. As you determine the next steps the Massachusetts legislature will take to advance the health of our residents, the undersigned organizations and individuals urge that as you move forward, you will enact legislation that ultimately promotes prevention and wellness by integrating health promotion and the prevention of disease into the fundamental mechanisms of our health care payment system. We urge you to seize this opportunity to make community-based prevention a priority in the way that the Commonwealth pays for the health of our residents.
While the bulk of our health care system is dedicated to treating disease once residents seek out medical care, primary prevention, especially community-based prevention, has the potential to provide the greatest cost savings as well as the most equitable and robust health outcomes. For example, prevention focused on reducing the rates of hypertension and diabetes, and associated complications could save Massachusetts $450.4 million per year within 5 years (Ormond et al. Potential national and state medical care savings from primary disease prevention. Am J of Public Health. 2011;101(1):157).
While there is increased emphasis on payment for clinically based prevention, our current health care system does not prioritize funding for community-based prevention; these programs have relied on outside public and private sources of funding, which cannot sustain the growing needs for preventative care in our communities. We strongly urge you to include specific funding for community-based prevention and public health in any payment reform measure passed by the legislature this year. We commend Representative Lewis on the introduction of H1498, An Act to Promote Prevention and Wellness Through a Public Health Trust, which provides a direct stream of funding for community-based public health efforts through the health care payment system. We request that you include a mechanism such as the one proposed in this legislation in any payment reform measure that is passed in the House and Senate.
Such a focus on keeping residents of the Commonwealth healthy must be a cornerstone of meaningful health system payment reform. It is imperative that we ensure that new funding will supplement, not supplant, our current state investments in prevention and public health.
The opportunity that we have before us today – to enact comprehensive payment reform that emphasizes prevention and wellness, instead of just disease treatment – may not come again for decades. Without adequate funding for prevention, restructuring health care costs alone will not prevent these costs from continuing to rise as we treat the growing burden of preventable disease.
Cc: Representative Steven Walsh, House Chair, Joint Committee on Healthcare Financing
Senator Richard Moore, Senate Chair, Joint Committee on Healthcare Financing
Representative Jeffrey Sánchez, House Chair, Joint Committee on Public Health
Senator Susan Fargo, Senate Chair, Joint Committee on Public Health
Sincerely,
(please sign onto this letter)
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Why the Prevention Trust?
We need a health care system, not just a sick care system.
Prevention helps families get healthy and stay healthy.
Three quarters of the money we spend on health care goes towards
treating preventable chronic diseases – but only 4 percent of health
care spending goes towards preventing people from developing
these conditions in the first place.
We have the tools we need to help children, families, and
entire neighborhoods stay healthy. Studies tell us that
community-based health promotion programs can help people
gain less weight, eat healthier and be more physically active,
reduce smoking, and cut their risk of heart disease.
· Home-based programs have been proven to help kids with asthma reduce their symptoms and miss school less often. These programs send trained workers to the home to show families how to improve the air quality inside, helping kids feel better and stay healthier.
· Shape Up Somerville: Eat Smart. Play Hard, is a program that has helped children stay at a healthy weight, giving them a better chance at avoiding chronic disease later in life. This program provided healthier food in schools and gave kids the chance to be physically active before, during, and after the school day.
· The Greater Lawrence Family Health Center worked with the entire community to help people learn how to prevent and control diabetes through healthy eating and physical activity. Within five years, the number of patients with their diabetes under control had more than doubled.
Rising health care costs are forcing us to cut spending on education and other important programs. We’ll never reduce these costs until we start keeping people healthier.
Each year, Massachusetts loses billions of dollars due to health conditions that could have been prevented, including:
· $1.8 billion on obesity-related medical costs.
· $3.72 billion on productivity losses due to asthma.
· $4.3 billion on medical treatment costs for diabetes.
· $17 billion on productivity losses stemming from obesity.
Community-based prevention can save Massachusetts half a billion dollars each year. Reducing diabetes and hypertension by only 5% would lead to large savings in medical costs in only a few years. This diseases lead to other conditions that are expensive to treat, such as heart disease, stroke, and renal disease. By investing in community-based programs that can prevent these conditions, Massachusetts could begin saving $450.4 million per year within 5 years. |
