Debate and Dialogue Sessions

The National Conference on Chronic Disease Prevention and Control has proposed a set of Key Challenges and Opportunities for Action to accelerate progress in preventing disease and promoting health. We now invite your feedback on these proposed Key Challenges and Opportunities for Action.  Please visit www.chronicdisease.org* to comment. The conference organizers will consider all input and rankings they receive by May 31 before issuing a final set of Key Challenges and Opportunities for Action as an official product of the 20th National Conference.

Key Challenges and Opportunities for Action

Topic 1 —  What Can We Do About the Effects of Food Advertising on Childhood Obesity?

• The federal government should continue to monitor and point to excess or "unfair" practices of the food industry. In addition, self-regulation of food advertising needs to be given a chance to succeed, underscoring the need for continued monitoring.
• Food companies that are doing the right thing need to be positively reinforced, although it is unclear how this should be done.
• There is a need for uniform nutritional standards for food advertised to children, in place of the multiple standards that now exist. The food industry is not likely to develop such standards, opening a potential role for the federal government.
• The increasing use of new media (such as Web and mobile technology) poses a challenge for monitoring and regulation of food advertising, and the food industry already is taking steps to self-regulate.
• The entertainment industry, which has enormous influence but does not necessarily view itself as either a marketer or a harmful force, needs to be engaged.

Topic 2 — Health Reform: Act Now and Make a Difference

• The debate must be reframed from "health care reform" to "health reform," capitalizing on the current political and economic environment to advance support for disease prevention and health promotion.
• Health and prevention should be included in all policies at the local, state, and federal levels.
• Public health should develop and engage leadership at every level and from every sector —government, civic, and private—to develop cross-cutting solutions for reforming health policy.
• With 9,000 CPT codes for medical services and procedures, but few codes for health improvement and wellness, we need to shift the balance by developing financial incentives for prevention.
• The prevention community must market its work and frame its messages around value, not cost, to gain the broadest possible political support.

Topic 3 — Health Care Delivery in the 21st Century: Is the Medical Home Model Ready for Primetime?

• The public health community should serve as an active convener for the many organizations necessary for building the medical home system, including providers, payers, and community-based organizations.
• Because primary care providers typically do not have sufficient expertise in behavior modification nor time for counseling, the public health community needs to secure funding and expand its capacity to provide this support to medical home providers.
• The public health community must provide current and relevant training, education, and information to primary care providers and medical associations.
• As the business case and the delivery and payment systems for the medical home model are being scaled up, public health must demonstrate the value it adds or risk being left behind with more unfunded mandates.
• Public health should work with primary care providers to developed shared infrastructure solutions for the medical home model, such as health information technology to improve communication among coordinated care teams and community groups.

Topic 4 — Addressing the Social Determinants of Health and Achieving Health Equity

• Public health should "quality-proof" its policies by examining how policies affect particular social groups such as racial/ethnic minorities, and focus on populations disproportionately affected by leading health concerns.
• Data collected on racial/ethnic groups must be sufficiently robust to allow for differentiation among racial/ethnic subgroups to inform public health practice in a more culturally appropriate way.
• Health impact assessments should be conducted as part of community needs assessments to document health status and risks—for example, the relationship between incarceration rates among African American men and the overall health status of the African American community.
• Communities must be engaged—actively, respectfully, and personally—in the process of establishing public health priorities.

* Links to non-Federal organizations are provided solely as a service to our users. Links do not constitute an endorsement of any organization by CDC or the Federal Government, and none should be inferred. The CDC is not responsible for the content of the individual organization Web pages found at this link.

Page last reviewed: April 29, 2009
Page last modified: April 29, 2009
Content source: National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion