Partnering to Prioritize Prevention [Podcast Series]
[:50] Dr. Bantham introduces her guest, Katie Adamson
Vice President of Health Partnerships and Policy at YMCA of the USA.
Katie has a background working on health advocacy in multiple sectors—nonprofit, for profit, government—particularly relevant to our topic today.
[1:14] Connecting the dots for policy makers between the chronic underfunding of public health and prevention and the impact of COVID
“COVID-19 has made known to policy makers what those of us—you and me—in public health have known for years—that there is a great disparity in health outcomes for racial and ethnic populations and low income populations in general.”
“We also have to build prevention and public health into our healthcare system as a paid for service because getting funding for CDC, as important as it is and will continue to be, it can not be the only approach. There needs to be a cultural shift of our understanding of what health means to lead with prevention and wellness and begin to pay for it.”
[3:24] Receptiveness to message linking COVID and chronic disease as a risk factor
“It may lead to more funding to prevent the next epidemic, and I think it is going to be incumbent upon us to put the two and two together.”
“Even to see the loss of lives during COVID is nowhere near the loss of lives that we will see in a regular year to chronic disease.”
[5:42] Making the health and economic case for prevention
“While the clinical setting is important, it will not achieve health without the partners that can change the drivers.”
“So, transportation needs to be there, housing, education, food systems, those voices that are trying to move the bigger systems to focus on health.”
[7:31] Diabetes Prevention Program as a case study
“At its core, the Diabetes Prevention Program has been and probably still is one of the best chances we have to prove prevention’s value in both human and economic terms to any of the naysayers out there.”
“What could have been one of the greatest successes of public health is, in my mind, poised to collapse without major relief by the federal agency.”
[12:17] Laying the groundwork for other interventions
“We have figured out how to scale it...the payment side has been challenging. And as we look at social determinants of health or we look at the lifestyle health interventions that the Y has been doing, either one, the health system is going to have to figure out how to integrate better with community”
“We need the health system to find a better way to pay community in a way that is realistic and understands that we are not the formal health system and don’t want to become the formal health system.”
[16:04] Community settings partnering with clinical settings to improve health outcomes
“We have co-built facilities with the healthcare system…After serving the community and finding out what their biggest barriers were in terms of social determinants, the Y looked to partners that could fill those gaps together, on site, collectively, in one place.”
“Pushing the envelope on innovation to be the partner to the health system to collectively improve health outcomes. Because even though they are only 20%, the healthcare system, the clinicians, are still the anchors and we need to build their strength with community partners.”
[20:13] Community-based organizations as an innovative, integral healthcare partner
“We need to figure out a way to maintain the unique benefit that community partners bring without just making them part of the health system.”
“I really think if the community players aren’t being able to lift up their own voices to the system to tell them what they need, we are not going to make the kind of change that we need to make.”
[23:13] Non profit advocacy during COVID
“Longterm, had these major entities—and some of them will still go under—but had they gone under, I just can not imagine. The services they provide that are the very same services that are undervalued, under resourced by the health system, they are helping the folks that have the highest risk of chronic disease, they are doing the social determinants of health work.”
“While we were being shut down, our YMCAs stepped up. And they are providing 1100 sites for grab n go meals for kids and families. We have 1100 emergency childcare sites. We have tens of thousands of calls every week going into the homes of older adults to stave off social isolation, to see if they need medication. I mean, you wouldn’t believe the services we are providing during this time where we have been shut down, furloughed. And that kind of passion and mission for the health of our communities needs to be there tomorrow.”
