The Healthiest Nation Alliance was announced earlier this month. It was timed to coincide with the CDC Leaders-to-Leaders conference that I was attending [webcasts of the event are available here].
The Healthiest Nation Alliance aspires to help create an America where an integrated national system values health, prioritizes prevention, and protects from emerging threats. The Alliance exists to provide leadership and foster actions by organizations and individuals that encourage or sustain health.
Panel presentations and group breakouts covered the usual territory when it comes to health promotion and disease promotion gaggles. What was clear throughout the discussions was a shared commitment by most participants to a social determinants model to frame the issue - a model that social marketers who adhere to the individual behavior change paradigm may find perplexing in its focus on upstream determinants. One of the implications that kept being drawn as well was that such a focus leads to examining the role of interpersonal and institutional networks in amplifying the effects of these determinants and suggesting the ways in which to change them.
One of the questions I have, and which wasn't really answered by anyone I talked with at the meeting, was how this new Alliance would intersect, compete with or otherwise relate to the Healthy People 2020 development process. Seems like we are asking a lot or organizations and people to invest time and resources in overlapping efforts.
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