One of the things I found interesting in this article was how they encouraged change at the consumer level, whereas I feel like most of the requests for change we encounter ask for innovation at the level of government or insurers. Obviously, some of these initiatives will require local, state, or federal government support, but most seem to focus to some degree on what people can do to help others, or what people can do to help themselves (i.e. handwashing to prevent lead paint exposure). I think one of the items to note is that, overall, attitudes need to change. While I agree that health assessment tools could be quite useful, I wonder about the degree of success the four pathways would have in the U.S. without a change in attitude.
I agree with Lauren and wanted to add that there is significant 'silo' mentality in the federal government with regard to their public programs and it is difficult to see them to come up with 'comprehensive' plans. While they seem to want to apply strategies of restructuring from big corporations, such as Google, to the government, they seem to forget the major difference in size of these two organizations. While Google is still in its infancy, our government is ancient and has relics from its birth which remain as the foundation. Not to mention all the arms, such as state, city, and local government agencies which need to be further improved and connected to each other. This huge concern has created roadblocks for the Obama administration, who has tried to convince the public and congress that reform of government programming is crucial to reducing debt, improving our health/education/housing conditions, and creating a country much more suited to compete economically with the global economy. This is where public health should come into play and take charge as the link to all these programming initiatives and through investigating outcomes, create a process for improvement.
One of the things I found interesting in this article was how they encouraged change at the consumer level, whereas I feel like most of the requests for change we encounter ask for innovation at the level of government or insurers. Obviously, some of these initiatives will require local, state, or federal government support, but most seem to focus to some degree on what people can do to help others, or what people can do to help themselves (i.e. handwashing to prevent lead paint exposure). I think one of the items to note is that, overall, attitudes need to change. While I agree that health assessment tools could be quite useful, I wonder about the degree of success the four pathways would have in the U.S. without a change in attitude.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Lauren and wanted to add that there is significant 'silo' mentality in the federal government with regard to their public programs and it is difficult to see them to come up with 'comprehensive' plans. While they seem to want to apply strategies of restructuring from big corporations, such as Google, to the government, they seem to forget the major difference in size of these two organizations. While Google is still in its infancy, our government is ancient and has relics from its birth which remain as the foundation. Not to mention all the arms, such as state, city, and local government agencies which need to be further improved and connected to each other. This huge concern has created roadblocks for the Obama administration, who has tried to convince the public and congress that reform of government programming is crucial to reducing debt, improving our health/education/housing conditions, and creating a country much more suited to compete economically with the global economy. This is where public health should come into play and take charge as the link to all these programming initiatives and through investigating outcomes, create a process for improvement.
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