A small army of community outreach workers could help the nation address its major health challenges. Here's a short list that will save lives, and maybe even money.
Thank you for this proposal create a robust new national Public Health Corps to address the deep unmet health needs of the American population. It resonates with me as a paradigm shifting new approach.
One of the key problems, as you point out, is the lack of a national infrastructure to train, coordinate, and support health workers who work across the fragmented competing provider systems to provide basic public health services across whole populations consistently.
A suggestion to assure access and engagement is to recruit, train, and support members from target communities in order to embed these key programs. This approach has an enhanced capacity to successfully outreach and engage in continuous case finding and ongoing chronic care.
Use the larger organization to coordinate and integrate with existing services and resources in communities (like pharmacies, primary care offices, and networks of consulting specialties who provide support, backup, and higher level care); provide ongoing training, shared information systems and HIS core services, compile best practices and vet evidence based information, and provide ongoing care management for whole populations (not limited to insurer).
Using this approach can rejuvenate basic health care delivery based in communities where people live, work, and learn. These can serve as health learning systems which can make obsolete the current fragmented profit driven structure by replacing them from the ground up.
Thanks again for this proposal which could impact the health of so many Americans who are not well served today.
Thank you for this proposal create a robust new national Public Health Corps to address the deep unmet health needs of the American population. It resonates with me as a paradigm shifting new approach.
One of the key problems, as you point out, is the lack of a national infrastructure to train, coordinate, and support health workers who work across the fragmented competing provider systems to provide basic public health services across whole populations consistently.
A suggestion to assure access and engagement is to recruit, train, and support members from target communities in order to embed these key programs. This approach has an enhanced capacity to successfully outreach and engage in continuous case finding and ongoing chronic care.
Use the larger organization to coordinate and integrate with existing services and resources in communities (like pharmacies, primary care offices, and networks of consulting specialties who provide support, backup, and higher level care); provide ongoing training, shared information systems and HIS core services, compile best practices and vet evidence based information, and provide ongoing care management for whole populations (not limited to insurer).
Using this approach can rejuvenate basic health care delivery based in communities where people live, work, and learn. These can serve as health learning systems which can make obsolete the current fragmented profit driven structure by replacing them from the ground up.
Thanks again for this proposal which could impact the health of so many Americans who are not well served today.
Ric Winstead, MD Family Medicine retired.
Excellent research! Thank you.