Culture of Health Blog

With the right data to inform priorities, and a powerful commitment to equity, places like Tulsa, Okla., are making progress to close health gaps.

It's a brand new year and like many Americans, I'm thinking about New Year’s resolutions—specifically, fitness and exercise resolutions. People who know me well know how I feel about working out (Hint: I don't like it. Or do it). But I have lots of good reasons for wanting to start. I turned 30 this year, so I’m starting to age out of that Young Invincible demographic (#GetCovered), and realizing that I am, in fact, “vincible.” As I get older, and watch my parents age, it's starting to hit home that getting to a particular shape or size really isn't the point. The point is getting my heart and body in the best shape I possibly can.

So this year, New Year’s resolution time feels a little different. And as I start thinking about making some changes, I’m reflecting back over the last two Data for Health listening sessions I attended in Charleston and San Francisco. As a result, I’ve decided that it’s time to think about setting my New Year’s resolutions in an entirely different way--by using data.

The world of research and evaluation is experiencing a dramatic increase in the quantity and type of available data for analysis. Estimates are that an astonishing 90 percent of the world’s data has been generated in just the past two years. This flood of facts, figures, and measurements brings with it an urgent need for innovative ways to collect and harness the data to provide relevant information to inform policy and advance social change. “Not long ago, we had a problem of insufficient data,” says Kathryn Pettit, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute. “Today we have more data than ever before, but we still need to build capacity to use it in meaningful ways.”

As part of our What’s Next Health series, RWJF regularly talks with leading thinkers about the future of health and health care. Recently, we spoke with Nate Garvis, founder and author of Naked Civics, about entrepreneurial thinking and how it can be applied to building a Culture of Health. RWJF Director Marjorie Paloma reflects on Nate's approach.

What would you be willing to do to learn?

This is just one of many provocative questions Nate Garvis of Naked Civics is asking the Foundation as we look to build a Culture of Health.

Many times, we come across people who seem to have all the answers. But Nate doesn’t pretend to. Instead, he uses questions that help us journey through an issue, guiding us toward a new type of discovery process—one that takes us to uncomfortable places and challenges us to work with unlikely bedfellows.

Last January the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation alerted the world to its new strategy: To build a Culture of Health for all, one that would allow every one of us to make healthy choices wherever we live, work, and play. A big reach, we know, but we are nothing if not optimistic. So, 12 months on, we asked ourselves—How’re we doing? Pretty good, as it turns out. Here are the top 10 signs that America is moving towards a Culture of Health (in no particular order).

10. The evidence is in—kids are beginning to slim down.

Research published in February shows continued signs of progress toward reversing the childhood obesity epidemic: Obesity prevalence among 2 to 5 year olds dropped by approximately 40 percent in eight years, a remarkable turnaround. There is still much work to do in this area, but at least our youngest kids can look forward to a healthier future.

I hear the phrase in the title used a lot when people talk about the important role advocacy plays in health policy-making, and it’s very appropriate. But there is one voice often missing in the conversation about how to fix the way we deliver, pay for, and think about health care: Consumers, the very people the system is designed to help. We must make sure that the people at the center of the health care system have a say in how it changes.

There is change afoot at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as our entire organization reorients its focus to implementing our Culture of Health strategy. At the heart of this new approach is the belief that everyone—regardless of their ethnic, racial, geographic or socioeconomic circumstances—should have the means and the opportunity to lead the healthiest lives they can. Achieving a Culture of Health requires us to broaden the understanding that good health is far more than the absence of illness; where we work, where we live, what we eat, and where our children play and go to school fundamentally affect our ability to lead healthy lives.

Looking ahead, we see this new focus on building a Culture of Health as catalyzing a larger national movement toward real societal transformation—a chance to eliminate health disparities caused by social, environmental, and economic factors, and a powerful way to improve and advance public health. This is a big challenge for all of us, but there are significant pockets of progress around the country where a diverse range of activities is already driving such transformation.

Let’s see a show of hands. Who among us, doctor, nurse, patient, family member, wants to give or get health care inspired by a factory—Cheesecake or any other?

Anyone?

I didn’t think so.

True confession: I have never actually eaten at a Cheesecake Factory (hereinafter referred to as the Factory). My wife, Mary, and I did enter one once. We were returning from a summer driving vacation. Dinnertime arrived, and we found ourselves at a mall walking into a busy Factory.

It seemed popular. The wait was long—really long. We got our light-up-wait-for-your-table device. We perused the menu. There was a lot there. Portions seemed gigantic. We looked at each other and, almost without speaking, walked back to the hostess, returned our waiting device and left.

You got me—I cannot say 100 percent that I wouldn’t love Factory food. We were so close that one time!

The brain is an exquisitely sensitive organ—so sensitive that, as recent advances in brain science show us, children who are exposed to violence, abuse, or extreme poverty can suffer the aftereffects well into adulthood. They are more likely to develop cancer or heart disease as they age, for example.

But how to translate these findings into practices and policies that can strengthen families and children? How do caregivers help traumatized children and their families cope with adversity? How can the science be applied to what teachers, doctors, social workers, and others on the front lines do every day? And how should the science affect whole systems, so that every person, at every level, can do their part to help children and families thrive?

Recently a team from the Foundation went to Baltimore to talk to families and community leaders, gaining their insights into an essential question for us: What can the Foundation do to strengthen the systems—health care, education, community—to create a web of support for families, one in which those at greatest risk can’t easily fall through?

What follows are my colleagues’ reflections on our time in Baltimore.

Martha Davis: I spoke with a Violence Interruptor, a Safe Streets employee who works to stop street violence. He is a 37-year-old man who has spent nearly half his life in jail, and has been shot 14 times. When I asked him how it is that he got to where he is today, he told me he came to the streets to learn how to “be a man,” but the birth of his children inspired him to want to be on the “side of peace." His was a life of violence and suffering, deep poverty, and racism; now he makes people feel safe and hopeful. He and the other Violence Interruptors are living proof that change is possible.