| The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Commission to Build a Healthier America will hold its first field hearing in Raleigh, N.C., on June 12, 2008. The hearing will showcase promising programs in early childhood development and feature testimony from local leaders and national experts about non-medical programs that are making a positive difference in the health and wellness of children.Commission Co-Chairs Mark McClellan, M.D., Ph.D., and Alice Rivlin, Ph.D., will convene the hearing. They will be joined by Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, M.D., M.B.A., president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, keynote speaker Jack Shonkoff, M.D., Julius B. Richmond FAMRI professor in Child Health and Development and director, Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University.
A year has passed since the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation announced it would commit $500 million to help reverse the childhood obesity epidemic. So, how far have we come? In a message to the field, RWJF President and CEO Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, M.D., M.B.A., discusses the accomplishments and progress made in schools and communities during the past twelve months, the importance of obesity prevention for our children and our nation, and what the Foundation anticipates in the year ahead.
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Childhood Obesity Program Area
It is hardly news that nearly 25 million kids and teens in the United States are overweight or obese. The alarming trend toward heavier body mass and poorer health is well-noted—not just in children and adolescents, but in all of us.But it is particularly welcome news that The Washington Post launched a comprehensive five-part series, "Young Lives at Risk: Our Overweight Children" (May 19–22, 2008). RWJF President and CEO Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, M.D., M.B.A., is one of several health policy experts interviewed for the series, which offers in-depth analysis of the issue from several perspectives, from the medical to the legislative.
Your social network may help you kick the habit. A new study, appearing in the May 22 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, quantifies the person-to-person effects of smoking cessation among married couples, siblings, friends and co-workers. The study found that smoking cessation occurs in network clusters and that the chances of continuing to smoke decrease significantly for an individual when their spouse, friend or even sibling quits smoking.This study is part of a larger grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Pioneer Portfolio to explore how the emerging field of social network analysis may provide new and potentially powerful ways to understand and address major health challenges such as smoking, substance abuse and obesity.
An updated clinical practice guideline released by the U.S. Public Health Service has identified new counseling and medication treatments that are effective for helping people quit smoking. In addition, the May 7 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association includes a commentary that urges clinicians to use the updated guideline to accelerate progress in reducing the use of tobacco.A consortium of eight federal and private-sector, nonprofit organizations collaborated to sponsor the 2008 PHS guideline update, including RWJF. In addition, more than 40 broad-based organizations have endorsed the guideline.
A new model for health care payment seeks to promote and reward high-quality, efficient, patient-centered care by using a novel method to pay hospitals, physicians and other providers. The PROMETHEUS Payment® approach establishes common incentives for all parties, creating an environment in which doing the right clinical things for patients would also allow providers and insurers to do well financially.RWJF is helping to fast-forward the PROMETHEUS approach from concept to reality with a $6.4-million commitment to expand and test the model in pilot communities.
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Quality/Equality Program Area
About 76 million Americans are sickened by foodborne diseases each year. Of these, an estimated 325,000 are hospitalized and 5,000 die. Medical costs and lost productivity due to foodborne illnesses in the U.S. are estimated to cost $44 billion annually.Fixing Food Safety: Protecting America's Food from Farm-to-Fork, produced by Trust for America's Health (TFAH), recommends a series of actions to help the nation modernize the food safety system by using strategic inspection practices and state-of-the-art surveillance.
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Public Health Program Area
Gary Slutkin, M.D., executive director of CeaseFire, and his colleagues were recently profiled in The New York Times Magazine cover story “Blocking the Transmission of Violence.” The program, which has been supported by RWJF, engages the community to work with young people at high risk of being involved in violence to provide on-the-spot alternatives to shooting and change social norms about gun violence.
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Vulnerable Populations Portfolio
Grantee Profile: Treating Violence as a Contagious Disease
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