Posts Tagged ‘Citizens Health Initiative’
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Boulder-Watching in the Granite State
By Laura Davie
NH Institute for Health Policy and Practice/NH Citizens Health Initiative
As the current Citizens Health Initiative pillar projects—Medical Home, Payment Reform, and Health Promotion Disease Prevention—move forward, Initiative leadership has started to look forward to determine what’s next.
In today’s post-health-reform-law world, this is not an easy question to answer. In its first five years, the Citizens Health Initiative took on many of the important issues related to reforming New Hampshire’s health system. When I speak of the accomplishments of the Initiative, I am speaking of the accomplishments of hundreds of people who have contributed time and expertise across all of projects. This work has ranged from developing strategic plans for health information technology/exchange and primary care, to implementing a multi-payer primary care medical home pilot project, to aligning our work on the leading actual causes of illness and death. The Citizens Health Initiative’s most recent effort under the Payment Reform pillar project is developing an Accountable Care Organization pilot. This pilot relies heavily on the partnerships, trust, and leadership developed during the course of the Initiative’s first five years. This work has laid a foundation in New Hampshire for implementing the health reform law. But what’s next?
This is not an easy question to answer (and it needs to be answered by many more organizations then just the Citizens Health Initiative). During a recent meeting of Initiative leadership, an analogy was made relating health reform to a boulder. Before the recent legislation passed, we were trying to push a boulder up a hill. Now that the legislation has passed, the boulder is now rolling down the other side. By the end of the meeting, there was agreement that health reform is more than just one boulder. It is several boulders of varying sizes, moving at different speeds.
New Hampshire needs a way to identify the boulders, track their paths, and make adjustments as needed. The Citizens Health Initiative leadership will continue to identify and discuss areas which would benefit from the partnerships, trust, and leadership built over the past five years.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Screening, Brief Intervention, Referral and Treatment: An Important Component in Health Reform
by John F. Bunker, ScD, MHS
President, New Futures
There are many different pieces to the new federal health care law, and many different organizations trying to make sense of how the law will impact New Hampshire. Our organization, New Futures, is one of those organizations. New Futures is a nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy organization working to reduce underage alcohol problems and increase access to treatment in New Hampshire.
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Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Two Opportunities for NH in Health Reform
Jeannie Ryer, New Hampshire Endowment for Health
Last week, Ned Helms blogged in this space about the “gravity” of health reform – in both senses of the word. It’s accurate, I think, to say that the forces of health care reform have finally attained critical mass. Now (to mix a few physics metaphors), the forces of gravity will move health reform forward. We are ready to go from words on a page to changes that will help fix our failing health care infrastructure.
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Tuesday, May 4, 2010
What If We Took Tobacco Seriously?
By Diane Smogor, Breathe NH
Having worked in the area of tobacco use prevention and cessation for more than sixteen years, I continually ask myself, “what if we took tobacco seriously?” On all accounts, investing in tobacco prevention and control efforts is a “no-brainer.” We’ve heard the statistics time and time again. Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death and disease; a risk factor for nearly every chronic disease; a primary driver of rising health care costs; an economic burden on families, businesses and our state; a fire hazard; and a powerful addiction—not to mention all the cigarette butts that get tossed on the ground every day, affecting our land, water, parks, beaches and neighborhoods.
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