Today, we celebrate the beginning of National Public Health Week. The APHA has put together a fantastic website promoting it, including a toolkit and other resources. They’ve also produced a video illustrating how public health has a huge return on investment:
Surgeon General Regina M. Benjamin, MD, MBA also released a video to kick off the week’s activities:
An interesting article on population health appeared last week on the website for the American Academy of Family Physicians (www.aafp.org). In the piece, author Jessica Pupillo notes that both the primary care and public health sectors are now looking to collaborate in an effort to improve population health. There is even a web-based resource in development called The Practical Playbook for Integrating Public Health and Primary Care.
According to the article, the foundation for this new resource is a March 2012 IOM report, Primary Care and Public Health: Exploring Integration to Improve Population Health. Another report referenced in the article is A Healthier America 2013: Strategies to Move from Sick Care to Health Care in Four Years by Trust for America’s Health. It explores recommendations to prioritize preventions and improve the health of all Americans, and it focuses on the need to look at innovative approaches and the importance of forming partnerships with organizations across a wide range of sectors for success.
For more on National Public Health Week, follow @NPHW on Twitter, or check out the conversation via hash tag #NPHW.
