Protecting the Prevention and Public Health Fund

The only thing I like better than sharing Community Transformation Grant (CTG) stories is sharing CTG videos.  Here’s one from Lima, Ohio (scroll to the 17:30 point) and one from Springfield, MO.

The fifth Public Health and Prevention Fund  dear colleague, Reducing Health Disparities Saves Money and Lives, has been distributed.  Senator Tom Udall (D-NM) was the lead signatory.  “The Fund is now making live-saving investments to ensure that health disparities are being reduced through evidence-based best practices, such as with Community Transformation Grants (CTGs) and the Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH) program — saving dollars and lives.

A second Senate “dear colleague” letter on the Prevention Fund has been sent.  This letter focuses upon the importance of public health infrastructure.  “The Prevention and Public and Health Fund is making life-saving investments to ensure that state and local health departments are capable of responding rapidly to disease outbreaks with state-of-the art technology and highly skilled professional — saving dollars and live

Forbes online has published a series of stories from Rob Waters of the Prevention Institute on how the Prevention and and Public and Health is being used to improve the health and fitness of Americans.  Today’s, Prevention Fund Helps Makah Tribe Awaken Sleeping “Ways of Wellness”,  details the work being done under the tribe’s Community Transformation Grant (CTG).  Yesterday’s piece,  Prevention Fund Helps Rural California County Fight Cancer, Promote Health, profiled Tuolumne County, CA and its use of a CTG to address tobacco use and  “chronic conditions that result when people eat too much unhealthy food and engage in too little healthy activity.”

Here’s another article from the Forbes prevention series – Nashville’s Rx for Improving Health: Ditch the Honey Buns, Bikes for Free.  The article features Nashville’s Communities Putting Prevention to Work program, which among other things is “modeled after similar ones in Washington DC and other cities {that let} residents and tourists rent bicycles, explore the city’s trails and greenways and even commute to work.”

The first in a series of planned Senate “dear colleague” letters on the Prevention Fund has been distributed.  The First, Prevention Saves Money and Lives addresses the burden of the obesity epidemic and the importance of investing in “locally-driven, evidence-based initiatives to make their communities healthier” through the Community Transformation Grant program.  The letter was signed by Senators Tom Harkin, Al Franken, Richard Blumenthal, Richard Durbin and Tom Udall.

From NewsOK (Oklahoma), Obamacare Funding Helps to Keep Oklahoma Programs Up and Running, a story featuring Affordable Care Act funding in Oklahoma, including a $13.2 million Community Transformation Grant (CTG).  This link includes a video on the CTG grant.

The National Coalition on Health Care (NCHC) has released a plan, Curbing Costs, Improving Care:  The Path to an Affordable Health Care Future, that “pairs nearly $500 billion in spending reductions and health-related revenues with longer-term policy changes designed to make health care affordable in the public and private sectors”  Under the “Invest in Prevention and Population Health Strategy” is a policy recommendation to “oppose further cuts to the Prevention and Public Health Fund and supplement the Fund’s efforts with additional discretionary funding”.

From the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, for a series of “new interviews, research updates and project spotlights on critical issues shaping the future of our nation’s health and health care”. Inspired by the recent 2012 American Public Health Association (APHA) Annual Meeting in San Francisco, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) highlighted key issues and talked with national health leaders about promising strategies to improve our nation’s health and health care. Click here for more information.

The Institute of Medicine has released its long-awaited report, An Integrated Framework for Assessing the Value of Community-Based Prevention .  “The report proposes a framework to assess the value of community-based, non-clinical prevention policies and wellness strategies.  The framework represents a valuable step toward realizing the elusive goal of appropriately and comprehensively valuing community-based prevention.”