Prevention Matters

The Environmental and Energy Study Institute, (EESI) held a Congressional briefing on May 24, 2010 that highlighted the important health choice Congress will need to consider as it debates a pending, multiyear reauthorization of Federal transportation spending. The briefing featured a presentation by Jonathan Patz, MD, MPH, professor and director of Global Environmental Health, University of Wisconsin, who spoke of the direct impact on public health that results from climate change; specifically the role that transportation policy plays in healthy/unhealthy air and lifestyles. While its well known that air pollution can cause respiratory diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma, Patz told congressional staffers that poorly planned transportation policies have a morbidity and mortality rate significantly higher than the conventional associations with automobile and pedestrian accidents.

In addition to extensive health consequences resulting from air pollution, Patz argued that transportation decisions are significant factors contributing to the nation’s obesity epidemic due to community designs that foster inactivity and chronic disease. Chronic diseases, such as diabetes, obesity, heart disease and cancer, are an inevitable result of a unhealthy lifestyle. Patz noted that nearly half of all car trips are less than two miles long, and a significant number could be reduced through investments and incentives in alternative transportation methods; especially investments such as mass transit, community design and other policies that reduce reliance on private automobiles and increase walking and other forms of physical activity. Whats the bottom line? While organizations like the American Public Health Association have persuasively argued that “climate change is a public health issue” Dr. Patz's presentation included a powerful image (see below) illustrating how simple policies can hinder or enhance a physically active lifestyle.

Americans now feel that it is as important for businesses to engage in health as it is for them to engage in the environment, says one of the folks who produced Edelman's "Health Engagement Pulse" survey.

"In essence, health is becoming the new/next green," Nancy Turrett, Edelman's President for Health, told The Health Care Blog's Matthew Holt. However, Turrett warns the business community, consumers think only one in ten Americans think business is doing an excellent or very good job at ANY of these.


"The social contract that business of all stripes has with society is fortunately -- ironically in light of the financial/ethical come-uppance of the past 18 months -- top of mind for many business leaders.  It's a great time to enlighten them about the health engagement business imperative -- minds and strategic plans are more open now that I’ve seen in my 25 years communicating and engaging in health.

Providing universal health care won't be nearly enough to truly reform the American health system, says the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In a recent column in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Dr. Julie Gerberding says universal access to quality health care services "would address no more than 25 percent of the gap between our current health status and that of the world’s healthiest nations."

"Health doesn’t only happen in the doctor’s office or the hospital bed," Gerberding wrote in an op-ed piece.

"We have to promote changes and policies that build health opportunities into everyday life — walkable streets, nutritious school lunches, health education and fitness programs for all students, smoking cessation programs and easy access to parks and gyms," she said. "Transportation, housing, agriculture, environment and education legislation abounds with opportunities to leverage better health — at an investment price that brings far better value than dollars spent treating chronic diseases once they occur."