Beyond The Affordable Care Act: Achieving Real Improvements In Americans’ Health

Abstract

Improved access to health care is essential if we are to fill the striking gaps between how healthy Americans are and how healthy they could be. But access alone is not enough. Health and longevity are also profoundly influenced by where and how Americans live, learn, work, and play. Recognizing this, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Commission to Build a Healthier America has identified concrete, feasible actions outside of medical care that constitute an urgent agenda for improving America's health. These recommendations require action at all levels of society to promote development and health in childhood, good nutrition, and communities conducive to good health.

Nativity and Health Disparities: Predictors of Immigrant Health

“…Certainly, because most Americans spend their time in their neighborhoods (Williams, McClellan, & Rivlin, 2010), neighborhood revitalization efforts at improving the well-being of people is at the root of social work practice. Considering that most immigrants are economically marginalized and, therefore, live in poor and unsafe neighborhoods, it is important to embark on neighborhood revitalization and community development efforts that minimize violence and other social vices that make our neighborhoods unsafe.…”

Public Policy Approaches to the Prevention of Heart Disease and Stroke

“…The Public Health Action Plan to Prevent Heart Disease and Stroke (2003) includes policy and environmental changes affecting the entire US population as a means to change adverse behavioral patterns as the first goal of a comprehensive public health strategy to prevent heart disease and stroke. 10 Indeed, recent considerations of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (US Healthcare Reform Legislation) emphasize the need for population-wide change outside the healthcare system, 11 citing estimates that only 10% to 15% of preventable deaths in the United States are affected by medical care. 12 This contribution to the Recent Advances in Preventive Cardiology and Lifestyle Medicine series focuses on interventions that facilitate population-wide cardiovascular health through public policy, environmental change, and legislation.…”

Development of a Value Co‐Creation Wellness Model: The Role of Physicians and Digital Information Seeking on Health Behaviors and Health Outcomes

“…The importance of these findings is magnified, given that the path from primary care provider access to health behavior changes was not significant. Similarly, prior research has shown that access by itself may not lead to behavioral change without physician–patient co‐creation through information seeking (Hibbard et al ; Williams, McClellan, and Rivlin ). Our results are consistent with the SDL proposition suggesting that consumers' information seeking extends the health providers' role in value co‐creation beyond the patient–provider encounter (Grönroos and Voima ), and demonstrates digital information seeking augments value co‐creation above and beyond value generated by health providers' inputs or prior knowledge the consumer has.…”

“…Although access to primary care is a key criterion for improving health outcomes, access alone is an insufficient requisite for inducing behavioral health changes (Williams, McClellan, and Rivlin ). Evidence shows that patients routinely fail to modify their diets, increase their physical activity, or pursue a host of other physician‐recommended pro‐health behaviors (Hibbard et al ; Makarem et al ).…”