Community Prevention Policy and Practice

Prevention Institute provides support to the BUILD Health Challenge—a unique coalition of national and regional funding organizations--designed to encourage communities to develop meaningful partnerships among hospitals and health systems, community-based organizations, local health departments, and other organizations to improve the overall health of local residents. The goal of the BUILD Health Challenge is to identify, accelerate, and spotlight best practice models and innovative approaches that reorient the field toward upstream factors that influence health.

In partnership with the American Public Health Association, Public Health Institute and Trust for America’s Health, Prevention Institute is sponsoring a Dialogue4Health web-forum series on community prevention.

Throughout California, community-based organizations have stepped up to address community needs during the pandemic. This report shares how local governments can better partner with community organizations to create a more equitable recovery from the social, economic, and health effects of the pandemic.

Californians have a tremendous stake in the national policy debates underway. Fundamental issues like healthcare access, environmental protections, privatization of public-sector assets and services, and the rights of vulnerable and marginalized communities hang in the balance. Our state is already poised to protect many of the core factors that form the bedrock of Californians’ health and well-being. Together, California communities, families, decision-makers, business leaders, and lawmakers have the opportunity—and the responsibility—to take a proactive and affirmative stance that propels us toward a future that is fair, just, and prosperous for all of our residents.

Prevention Institute has a 20-year history of promoting quality primary prevention—the skills and approaches to prevent people from getting sick or injured in the first place. In the aftermath of the 2016 election, we have immersed ourselves in assessing the path forward for prevention and equity.

Prevention Institute’s Larry Cohen and John Auerbach, Executive Director of Trust For America’s Health, published an Op-Ed in The Hill: Ounce Of Prevention Is Worth A Pound Of Cure — Stop Ignoring Preventative Care.  Prompted by recent bipartisan efforts to improve the ACA, the Op-Ed emphasizes the importance of building prevention into healthcare policy, which is essential for effectively achieving improved health, lower costs, and reduced burden on the health system.

This commentary by PI's Larry Cohen, published in Modern Healthcare magazine, looks at the effort to transform the healthcare system and refocuses it on outcomes and the health of the population. 

As a leader responsible for implementing community prevention initiatives, you can harness the power of the media to make the case for community prevention. Ask yourself: if the only understanding that decision makers (and the public) had about community prevention was formed by the media, what would they know? What wouldn’t they know?

Across the country, health providers and public health leaders are challenging the old ways of delivering health services by developing cutting-edge strategies to improve the health of their communities and their patients by addressing underlying community conditions.