Public Health Intersection

So here we are at the beginning of the New Year, with everyone talking about New Year’s resolutions which usually focus on how they are going to make their life better, be better people, change bad habits, etc.

As my sweetheart and others who know me well will tell you, in order to get my juices flowing to write something, I need a theme.

I tried really hard to come up with a New Year’s resolution based theme, like actually staying on schedule with my blog, being a better parent, partner, boss, etc. but nothing seemed to resonate. Although, that shouldn’t let m ....

Now that I have your attention, this title came to me while I was reading reviews and bits and pieces of Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson.

In the course of the book Mr. Jobs says things about colleagues, competitors and acquaintances that might've been difficult to say were he still alive and subject to the repercussions of such comments and observations.

It got me thinking about what I might say if I found myself in a similar unfortunate situation.

It also got me thinking about what people who work day after day with the same people in the same ....

On September 14, the Public Health Accreditation Board, (PHAB), began its effort to promote public health accreditation throughout the US.

While many states have implemented state and/or local public health accreditation activities over the last decade and a half, the PHAB effort is the first national foray into public health accreditation.

Over the last two decades the public health field has participated in several other community and self assessment and tracking activities, including performance standards, model standards, community assessment, as well as, several pro ....

Don Miguel Ruiz, the author of, “The Four Agreements” came to mind recently as I was sifting through the blizzard of news, faux news and almost news that comes our way on a regular basis.

For those who aren’t familiar with The Four Agreements they are essentially Don Miguel Ruiz’s take on Toltec philosophy.

The Agreements are;

• Be Impeccable With Your Word
• Don’t Take Anything Personally
• Don’t Make Assumptions
• Always Do your Best

Recently there have been so many incidences of people playing with t ....

At a recent meeting in New Orleans I had the opportunity to hear Dr. Robert Ross, the Executive Director of the California Endowment, speak.

It was a great presentation on the efforts of the California Endowment to sponsor real change in communities across California.

At the end of his talk he left us an observation/quote that went something like, “If you think you’re in a debate and the other party thinks they’re in a fight you’re going to get your ass kicked”.

As I and another gentleman of a more pacifist persuasion shared a cab to the airport, what Dr. Ross mea ....

Recently I made a rather cavalier statement at the end of a difficult session with my management team.

Let me just say, before I go any further, that I'm thrilled to have a management team.

In my previous position, I was pretty much a one person show.

I can't tell you how much it helps to share the successes and challenges with a team that is committed to achieving the same vision.

But let’s get back to what I said.

What I said was, "Anyone can lead in good times".

And that's actually what I meant.

I've had a long and varied life ....

I was recently at a meeting where one of my colleagues asked the group which they thought was more dysfunctional, congress or the state legislature.
In response, folks went around the table and shared their opinions about whether congress or the state legislature was more dysfunctional.
Had I served in either body, I might have been a bit concerned that no one challenged the core premise, i.e., that both bodies are dysfunctional.

There is certainly loads of recent evidence that neither body behaves in a businesslike fashion, with missed deadlines, huge deficits and see ....

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to hear Simon T Bailey speak at the California Society Of Association Executives.
Simon is a very compelling speaker and part of his talk revolves around the concept of what he calls Vuja De which is intended to be the opposite of déjà vu.
He uses the common understanding of déjà vu, i.e. something we have seen before or feel that we have seen before and suggests that we need to strive for vuja de or something we have never seen before.
Having had the opportunity to take four years of high school French as well as being a French interp ....

Every once in a while things just seem to go together. Peanut butter and jelly, peanut butter and chocolate, peanut butter and marshmallow….. Now I'm getting hungry.

So when I saw the Affordable Care Act requiring a community health assessment to be conducted by nonprofit hospitals and the Public Health Accreditation Board requiring state and local health departments to do community health assessments as part of accreditation, I thought it just makes sense to do them together.

Not only would it save time, energy and resources, it would promote cooperation and collaboratio ....

I can’t help but jump into this discussion after the tragic events in Arizona this past weekend. While tragedies such as these deserve and receive a lot of attention, the real challenge is applying these hard learned lessons in our everyday life.

Almost everyone remembers their mom’s admonition to not “say anything bad about anyone,” and their dad’s instruction to not “throw the first punch,” but it seems that that trite but valuable guidance has been substantially eroded over the years.

Mom’s “If you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all” ....

From time to time I’ve used this space to fret about the role public health might/will play in health reform.

I get even more concerned when people call it health “care “reform or the catchier “Affordable Care Act”, (distilled down from the wordier Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act). Don’t people believe that the best way to assure affordable care is to assure healthier people?

In all the discussions around health reform no one seems to be quite sure where public health fits.

One of the scarier admonitions from experts goes something like, “Well even ....

One of the things we pride ourselves on at PHFE is our focus on compliance.

PHFE is the trustee of hundreds of fiscal sponsorship arrangements that require us to be able to comply with numerous standards and reporting requirements.

For the most part we believe these standards and requirements are meant to assure that PHFE is being honest and responsible in managing the resources and expectations of our funders and partners.

Recently there has been a lot of effort focused in congress to repeal a component of the Affordable Care Act that will require businesses to ....

Earlier this week I was at a national meeting of public health related organizations where much of the discussion was focused around what public health might look like in response to the passage of healthcare reform.

There were also representatives from the federal government, philanthropy and public health think tanks participating in the workshops and dialogue.

When asked the question, “What should public health be doing to address the upcoming changes in healthcare reform?” the common answer was, “We’ll have to wait to see what happens”.

This brings me to th ....

In February, prior to the passage of health care reform, I blogged about “Whither Public Health?” and I thought it might be time to revisit the topic.

Recently, there have a couple of presentations and a couple of articles that have caught my attention.

A May 5, 2010 article by David Hemenway in the New England Journal of Medicine points out some of the challenges faced by public health in attracting resources may be due in part to its population based approach, its long term benefits and so on.

I think the author actually gets a little cynical when suggesting that p ....

This past weekend marked my two year anniversary as PHFEs’ CEO so I’m trying to take that “big step back” and reflect on where we were when I started and where I expected us to be after two years.

Because it’s the way I am, (which I blame on the work ethic instilled by my mother and my late wife’s focus on constantly trying to do better as a couple, as parents, etc), I expected to have much more accomplished after two years.

However, it’s also important to look at what we have been able to accomplish in a relatively short period of time.

When the board selected me as ....

Prior to coming to PHFE, a significant portion of my career was spent in the public policy arena and a significant portion of that time was spent trying to implement population based policies that protected and improved the public’s health.

From time to time there would be cries of “nanny government” from those policy makers, interests and organizations that thought that public health interests were going too far and intruding into the people’s lives without any reasonable cause or tangible benefit.

Recent areas of contention include menus with fat and calorie counts, he ....

Just what is in the recently passed health reform laws will be keeping many of us busy for some time.

In the old days, (meaning at least two years ago), it would have been my job to sort all of it out and provide a digestible version for my constituents and colleagues minutes after the votes.

This time around that work falls to talented colleagues and I await their dissections and helpful explanations.

Having been in our nation’s capitol last week while all of this was starting to wind down, I was struck by how there didn’t seem to be a commonly held reaction to w ....

The State of California requires that nonprofit hospitals do an assessment of the benefit they provide the communities they serve.

This assessment is required to occur every three years.

In the interest of full disclosure, and to provide a framework for this blog, PHFE sponsors the Orange County Health Needs Assessment, (OCHNA), which publishes a community benefit report every three years on behalf of the nonprofit hospitals serving Orange County, California.

OCHNA also provides many other reports and services on an annual, as well as, project basis.

With ....

As the Public Health Accreditation Board, (PHAB), begins the beta testing of a national accreditation program, www.phaboard.org

As work continues on the various iterations of the National Public Health Performance Standards Program, (NPHPSP), www.cdc.gov/od/ocphp/nphpsp

As efforts continue with initiatives like Mobilizing for Action through Planning and Partnerships, (MAPP), and Community Balanced Scorecard, March 15, 2010

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OMG it always amazes me how comfortable we become with the lexicons of our various professions. Lexicons are the vocabularies of languages and in this case I’m talking about vocabularies that are specific to a particular profession and while not always including abbreviations like the one starting this article are often useful to those in a particular profession to facilitate communication, they however can also be impediments to communication or at least cause confusion for those outside of that profession.

A case in point came in a recent e-mail from a colleague who noted that they h ....

How much of your time is spent putting out fires one at a time?

How many remember the old public health parable about whether your time and efforts were best spent downstream pulling people out of the river or going upstream to see how they ended up in the river in the first place.

When I was a trade association lobbyist representing literally thousands of public health workers, I had an open door, phone, e-mail policy encouraging all of them to feel free to contact me directly at anytime.

I still have the same policy here at PHFE.

When someone would bring ....

Most of the organizations I’m familiar with believe that they operate on framework based on, “What we all believe”.
What’s interesting is that every time I’ve asked more than one person about what we all believe, I get different answers.
While they’re not necessarily conflicting, they’re not necessarily the same either.
Often what we all believe is also described as corporate culture.
Who establishes and maintains corporate culture?
Who keeps the scrolls upon which is written, what we all believe.
Sometimes you see what we all believe displayed on p ....

In the introduction to my blog I reference taking, “The Big Step Back”, which, while it means something to me, may leave you in the dark.

One of my favorite areas of study in college was anthropology, particularly the concept of the participant observer.

Which to me meant letting people know you were there watching and taking part but not necessarily becoming a lifetime member of the tribe.

This approach has served me well during my career of working with government but never in it.

Speaking of government, when are our legislators, governors, congress people ....

The more things change, the more they stay the same

We’ve just come through our initial tangle with novel influenza, (remember swine flu, Spanish flu)

We’ve seen recent terrorist attacks, (remember the Maine, the Cole, 9/11)

We’ve seen that natural disasters can still change the face and structure of society, (too many tsunamis, tornados, hurricanes and earthquakes to remember)

We’ve seen the national efforts at health insurance reform go through a continuing saga of twists and turns, (remember Medicaid, Medicare, and other less successful legislative efforts ....

There is an app for almost everything these days.

I’m constantly amazed with the number and variety of apps available for all sorts of devices.

I recently added an app that reads my e-mails to me when I’m mobile and sends an automatic response to the sender letting them know I’m mobile and can’t respond immediately., (just in case any PHFE HR or California law enforcement officials are reading this).

It got me thinking about what a public health app would have to be designed to do.

It would have to;

• Monitor health status at the community, ....