RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) isn't waiting for either the Senate or the House of Representatives to make preventive health care a part of our national health policy. At a press conference yesterday, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that she would be using money from the stimulus package passed in February to fund and create programs aimed at improving nutrition, cutting obesity, and eliminating tobacco use, all of which cost the nation billions in healthcare dollars.
THE DETAILS: This new program, called "Communities Putting Prevention to Work," allots $650 million for local initiatives that will lead to long-term reductions in obesity and tobacco use, as well as overall improvements in nutrition, such as improving the quality of school lunch programs and opening supermarkets in inner cities. "We don't have to wait for health reform bills to pass to put a higher priority on wellness and prevention," Sebelius said at the conference, noting that obesity alone costs the health system $150 billion per year, more than all forms of cancer combined. Thomas Frieden, MD, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which will oversee the initiative, was also at the conference and added, "Obesity is the largest and only significantly increasing cause of illness and death in this country, and it also increases the risks of other diseases like cancers and heart disease. There is an enormous gap between what we know and what we do today, and this will help bridge that gap."
Initially, the program will make available $373 million in grants for communities to implement programs that emphasize truly preventive health care: healthy nutrition, physical exercise, and cutting tobacco use, for instance, enacting smoking bans and creating physical education programs at schools or community centers. Sebelius and Frieden also stressed the importance of "evidence-based" programs that lead to long-term gains, such as getting junk food and vending machines out of schools and making fresh produce easier to access in low-income neighborhoods.
WHAT IT MEANS: Each of the five versions of the healthcare reform act floating around Congress have incorporated some sort of prevention and wellness programs into national health policy, said Sebelius, calling it "one area where everyone agrees." Which is heartening, since, as she put it, "Right now, we have a healthcare system that puts a high priority on expensive medical care and treatment once people get sick, but puts a low priority on the inexpensive preventive care that prevents people from getting sick in the first place."
And that's a serious blight on our existing national health policy. "When you come into a doctor's office, you get weighed and measured and asked questions about how you feel, but the one question that's missing is how much exercise do you do," says William O. Roberts, MD, past president of the American College of Sports Medicine and professor in the department of family medicine and community health at the University of Minnesota Medical School. Making sure we all get enough exercise is one thing that our paperwork-flooded, time-pressured doctors don't get paid for.
While preventive health care becomes a higher priority for healthcare policy makers, you can make it a priority for yourself with three easy steps:
• Walk. Really, it's that easy. The American Heart Association says that walking for just 15 minutes a day (and eventually building up to 30) can cut heart disease, high blood pressure, and all manner of other physical ills.
• Eat at home. If there's one obstacle against public health that just about all of us face, it's fast-food joints and restaurants with overly salty, high-fat, and high-sugar meals. And without adequate menu labeling, you may never know how many calories or salt grams are actually in that Denny's "Moons Over My Hammy" egg sandwich. Take your health into your own hands, and eat at home. After all, the Department of Agriculture (UDSA) is trying to make that easy, too.
• Ask, and you shall receive. Don't take doctor's prescriptions at face value. If you're feeling ill and he or she tries to hand you a pill, ask, "Will exercise fix this?" You may very well save yourself hundreds on prescription drugs.