How the National Prevention Council Can Overcome Key Challenges and Improve Americans' Health

The Affordable Care Act of 2010 established the first-ever National Prevention, Health Promotion, and Public Health Council out of recognition of the need for a major new national focus on disease prevention.

Composed of cabinet-level officials from a range of federal agencies, the council has a clear policy mandate: to coordinate and lead prevention, wellness and health promotion efforts across the entire federal government and the nation. In its first year, the council developed a comprehensive prevention strategy, but its full implementation is threatened by economic, political, bureaucratic and institutional challenges.

This article examines these challenges and makes recommendations for how to maximize the positive impact of the council through effective cross-agency collaboration aimed at improving Americans’ health, including framing prevention as a bipartisan cost containment strategy; distancing the work of the council from the implementation of other aspects of the Affordable Care Act; using dollars from the Prevention and Public Health Fund to incentivize ongoing participation by non-health agencies; and providing technical assistance and analytic support to non-health agencies willing to broaden attention to the health impacts of their non-health policies.


This study was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Mobilizing Action toward Community Health (MATCH) initiative.

Linking Community Development and Health

  1. 1. How the Health and Community Development Sectors are Combining Forces to Improve Health and Well-Being
  2. 2. Building the Scaffold to Improve Health Care to Advance Americans' Health
  3. 3. Partnerships Among Community Development, Public Health, and Health Care Could Improve the Well-Being of Low-Income People
  4. 4. Despite Obstacles, Considerable Potential Exists for More Robust Federal Policy on Community Development and Health
  5. 5. Bringing Researchers and Community Developers Together to Revitalize a Public Housing Project and Improve Health
  6. 6. Community Health Centers and Community Development Financial Institutions
  7. 7. Training New Community Health, Food Service, and Environmental Protection Workers Could Boost Health, Jobs, and Growth
  8. 8. The PROMETHEUS Bundled Payment Experiment
  9. 9. Mayo Clinic Employees Responded to New Requirements for Cost Sharing by Reducing PossiblyUnneeded Health Services Use
  10. 10. Gaps in Residency Training Should be Addressed to Better Prepare Doctors for a Twenty-First-Century Delivery System
  11. 11. How the National Prevention Council Can Overcome Key Challenges and Improve Americans' Health
  12. 12. Evolving Brand-Name and Generic Drug Competition May Warrant a Revisionof the Hatch-Waxman Act
  13. 13. Strengthening Children's Oral Health

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