Prevention Matters

Kathie Ruffatto, Partnership’s Program Associate for Worksite Health, co-presented with Bill Sells ,Vice President, Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association at the YMCA State Wide Pioneering Healthier Communities Conference today. The YMCA State Wide Pioneering Healthier Communities Initiative was launched in 2008 at local and state levels in six states and in 32 communities. This year Illinois, Michigan and Ohio have been selected to join the movement to create healthier communities through policy, systems and environmental change strategies.

Participants from each state were able to attend various break-out sessions on different topics. The focus of Kathie and Bill’s break out session was how employers and employees can increase their health through worksite wellness policies. Bill Sells discussed the importance of physical activity both in the workplace and the community and how the workplace can influence one another. He emphasized that creating a culture of health amongst the nation’s youth should be top priority for policymakers.

Kathie followed Bill’s presentation by highlighting the significance of good nutrition in workplaces and underscored the important role CEOs and top management play in creating environments conducive to good health. With new Leading by Example publications, Kathie was able to give specific examples of successful nutrition policies from the featured companies.

The presentations spurred a lively discussion on the importance of worksite wellness and how they could help support businesses within their communities. Questions ranged from transportation to program and/or policy implementation. All of these communities are or will begin to take great strides in removing barriers so that their citizens can be healthy. They are taking an important first step in understanding what it takes to create a culture of health.

People living in "healthy neighborhoods" that provide easy opportunities for exercise and healthy eating were less likely to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in a five-year cohort study, after controlling for such factors as age, income, race, and education. "The strength of the association was considerable and equivalent to a reduction in type 2 diabetes incidence associated with a BMI of 5 [points] lower in this sample," Amy Auchincloss, PhD, MPH, of Drexel University in Philadelphia, and colleagues wrote in the Oct. 12 Archives of Internal Medicine. The analysis covered participants in Baltimore, the Bronx borough of New York City, and the North Carolina county that includes Winston-Salem.

Partnership for Prevention's Chairman today urged Congress to increase and stabilize resources for the U.S. Task Force on Community Preventive Services.

"...The Task Force on Community Preventive Services, supported by CDC staff, has had erratic and consistently insufficient funding. It has only been able to cover a minority of the possibly effective community policies and programs, and it has had virtually no funding to disseminate its findings," Jonathan Fielding, MD, MPH, testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

Fielding, who is Director and Health Officer at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, also serves as the chairman of the community preventive services task force. He said the clinical services group "has been more comprehensive because it has a clearly delineated domain (clinical medicine) and has had a sustained, although inadequate, funding base." He urged more funding for both groups. While Fielding didn't specify a funding source, the $2.35 billion in CDC funding proposed in the House's version of the economic stimulus bill could be one possible source.

Fielding also echoed Partnership's recommendation that Congress enact legislation identifying a specific source and a specific annual amount for the sustained funding of core public health activities at the state and local levels. Using tobacco control as an example, he said many state and local health departments "have no sustained funding, and almost none have sufficient funding to implement the recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."