Fellows present plans to improve healthy living and healthy communities by moving discussions from improving health care to improving health
After five days of intensive debate and collaborative discussion around conceptualizing health outside of health care, how to move on from being hooked on health care, and the role of civil society, public authorities and health justice in health improvement, the Salzburg Global Seminar session Hooked on Health Care: Designing Strategies for Better Health concluded with Fellows in groups presenting their projects that hope to put their words into action.
The 61 Fellows, who represented 17 different countries, consisted of people from many different fields including nutrition, traditional medicine, maternal health, health care improvement and architectural design. They all came with the purpose of finding ways to turn the focus of health improvement away from health care and instead focusing on promoting healthy lives and healthy communities.
The first group proposed that an “Amnesty International for Health” was needed to help achieve health equity for all. The group remarked that current rise in health care is unsustainable and we needed to foster a community interest from civil society, social movements and aid from the business sector. The group hopes to raise awareness for these issues in a co-written editorial they aim to be published in medical journals and the mainstream press.
The second group addressed the use of social movements as leverage to promote health movements. They looked at other progressive social movements and hoped to use what they had learnt to network and spread health movements. “We can start now, so why wait? Let’s take all the knowledge we have and use it with help from our sponsors,” said a representative from the group.
The third group proposed the development of a Community Health Laboratory to find and improve research into other determinants of health by engaging with the community and community leaders. They proposed this approach as they claimed this was “the only way we can make definitive changes.” They also wanted to focus on progress rather than targets as funding was considered to be far too dependent on meeting targets.
A fourth group focused on investment strategies and how to better use all available capital to achieve sustainable population health goals. “We can’t focus and rely on philanthropy,” said one Fellow while discussing the barriers that are currently hindering investment. They suggested that previous experiments have been expensive and with limited scope; single goal, single idea, single backer. The idea proposed by the group involved issuing bond style investment opportunities in the hope of securitizing public health and commoditizing the outcomes needed to improve health.
Another group offered local strategies for engaging business in health initiatives for their local communities. The group rationalized the importance of engaging the business sector due to it being a key stakeholder in health and its importance for the sustainability of the health sector. Their proposals involved making sure effectiveness was contextualized to the local community, creating long-term working relationships and defining problems both facing the health sector and health issues within the business sectors. One Fellow will be testing the methodology from this group in Baltimore, MD, USA in the coming weeks.
A sixth group focused on a sustainable health equity compass (SHE). They proposed using a new simple integrated benchmark based on low GDP but high life expectancy to address health equity. Their aim is to validate and apply accessible tools that measure the magnitude and trends of health inequity at international, national and local levels to help inform decision making. One Fellow summed up the ideology of the project by stating: “With this process we have to dig, to find the root cause of the root causes.” The Fellows intend to launch a website once they return to their home countries.
The seventh and final group focused on politics and how to speak “health” to power. In homage to their location at Schloss Leopoldskron and its ties to the Sound of Music, the group asked: "how do you solve a problem like health?" In response, they created a website called The Salzburg Method that offers a clear twelve-point plan, aimed at both those inside and outside governments at all levels who "want to move health up the agenda inside existing structures."
While many in the room were looking forward to moving their projects forward in their home contexts as they prepared to leave Salzburg, anyone who felt like the challenge was too big to tackle was inspired in the closing remarks by an African proverb: “If you think you're too small to make a difference, lock yourself in a room with a mosquito.”
The session Hooked on Health Care: Designing Strategies for Better Health is part of the Salzburg Global series “Health and Health Care Innovation in the 21st Century” and was held in collaboration with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The Health Foundation. More information on the session can be found here: www.salzburgglobalseminar.org/go/559