Supporting a Movement for Health and Health Equity Lessons from Social Movements: Workshop Summary (2014) / Chapter Skim
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6 Reaction and Response
6 Reaction and Response
Pages 57-64
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From page 57... ...
Isham urged other roundtable members to ponder these questions as well, following the presentations by Jeff Levi and Sanne Magnan, members of the Roundtable on Population Health Improvement.1 INITIAL REACTIONS TO THE DAY Although he praised the inspiring insights and examples presented over the course of the day, Levi noted that some discussion on creating social movements struck him as rather abstract, particularly from his perspective as a participant in the AIDS and LGBT movements and as a staff member of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. If those movements had deliberately employed framing as an approach, he wondered, "would we have gotten things done better or faster?
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From page 58... ...
"That work is already happening," he said, and the audience, including roundtable members, could embrace, support, and connect to efforts already under way. "Too often our conversations are about despair, when there's all this exciting work happening that we just need to shine a light on." The population health movement rightly challenges government policy, Levi said, but many public health professionals work for or are funded by the government and so they cannot lead the movement.
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From page 59... ...
"Population health is a means for achieving health equity. It is not an end in and of itself." Moreover, he continued, a movement for health equity will be much easier to catalyze than one for population health, which still lacks a clear definition, even among public health professionals; meanwhile, messages about fairness and equity resonate with the public and fall into a "sweet spot" in the current political debate.
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From page 60... ...
• Draw encouragement from Ganz's reflections that social movements are inspired by a combination of pain and hope, find effective ways to send the message that there is healing to be done. Magnan ended by saying that the day's proceedings could inspire participants to continue to take up, in the words of Ganz, the "mantle of leadership," to contribute to the "healing that needs to be done in our land" to achieve population health and health equity.
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From page 61... ...
Terri Wright of the American Public Health Association suggested that such efforts be directed by asking movement leaders what kinds of information and evidence they most need. José Montero, president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials and director of the New Hampshire Division of Public Health Services, also emphasized the importance of showcasing the evidence on the relationship between income and health.
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From page 62... ...
Rather than occurring between the same parties, such conflicts engage different groups at different times, he said, so it is probably unproductive to define an "enemy" for this movement. Moreover, he observed, "regardless of where we sit, we are still members of our community, users of health services, and have families who are in the same position." Filling Existing Gaps and Overcoming Barriers Several individual participants, including David Kindig and Winston Wong, described different areas for future study and discussion, including studying the use of technology and the media -- especially social media -- to mobilize support for a movement to advance population health and health equity; the use of metrics to illuminate the many facets of health inequity; the development of a deeper understanding of the spectrum of values with regard to health, so as to be able to communicate concepts such as the social determinants and health equity to the public; and the exploration of the potential usefulness of big data in characterizing population health, identifying problems to be addressed, and measuring the impact of interventions.
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From page 63... ...
"We armed them with the data and the resources they needed to make something happen," she recalled. "That's a simplistic idea of a small movement, but it shows how it makes a big difference." Thompson suggested that roundtable members reach out to new partners with common interests in public health, such as the Federal Reserve Bank.
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From page 64... ...
health care system relative to those of peer countries, and he argued that substantial, sustained changes in resource flows, particularly in the direction of the social determinants of health, are needed -- whether these changes result from strategies such as reducing Medicare waste or from some yet unknown solution. Dismantling and reversing current policies of "disinvestment" in public health will be a huge challenge, he acknowledged.
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