Take Steps To...
Health Care Professionals and Advocates
Hospital administrators, physicians, nurses, and other health leaders can see where the health problems are and work to identify and create solutions. As leaders in health care, they are a trusted source for delivering health information to the community.
The County Health Rankings can help health care professionals and advocates identify the underlying causes of health problems and work to create solutions. By getting involved, you can help state and local leaders work to prevent and address the health problems you see every day in the clinics and hospitals where you work. All of us have a role to play in raising awareness about the multiple factors that affect our health and the health of our communities. As a health care professional or advocate, you are uniquely positioned to use this report as a call to action, informing community members about the findings and mobilizing your community so all residents can be healthy. Here are some ideas in and beyond health care to consider:
- Beyond Health Care: New Directions to a Healthier America--Recommendations from the RWJF Commission to Build a Healthier America
- Programs that Work in the Health Care System (from Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease)
- The Triple Aim (from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement)--IHI believes that new designs can and must be developed to simultaneously accomplish three critical objectives, or what they call the “Triple Aim™”: improve the health of the population; enhance the patient experience of care (including quality, access, and reliability); and reduce, or at least control, the per capita cost of care.
Other ways you can help include:
- Get the word out. Talk about the findings with your colleagues, staff, and patients.
- Speak about the report and issues in your state and community at your local medical or hospital association or other member organization (e.g, medical society, professional nursing organization, etc.).
- Talk to the hospital board about the report and identifying steps that board members can take as leaders in the community.
- Reach out to people you know and see every day about the County Health Rankings report, e.g., at a local Chamber of Commerce breakfast or at an urban planning meeting.
- Post information about the report on a listserv, website, or e-newsletter.
- Organize. Meet with local leaders and community residents to discuss barriers to health and ways to overcome them. Host a town hall meeting or invite people to one.
- Get policymakers to pay attention. Meet with your local legislator to educate them about how the report highlights the many factors that influence health and what steps can be taken at the public level to address them.
- Be an advocate. Step out as a spokesperson about the Rankings and the health issues you care about and rally other community leaders to take action.
- Contact your local public health department about participating in a local task force or, if none exists, organize one to tackle these pressing issues in your community.
- Ask your local or state health department about what they’re doing in response to the report to make sure you aren’t duplicating efforts.
- Share your resources. Offer your time, staff, and/or funding with community partners. These are resources that can go toward community plans and programs aimed at tackling factors that affect health.
- Participate in a town hall meeting on how well your county performed in the rankings and what needs to be done to improve the health of your community.
- Communicate your message. Write an op-ed or talk to the media about the Rankings and what needs to be done in your community to bring about solutions.
Within health care, there are many specific action guides/tools to increase access to health care, improve quality, and/or reduce costs. Here are a few examples of these resources:
- Action Guide to Reduce Avoidable Readmissions (from the Commonwealth Fund and the Health Research and Educational Trust)
- Quality Tools (from the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research)--a compilation of practical tools for assessing, measuring, promoting, and improving the quality of health care
- Safe Practices for Better Health Care (from the National Quality Forum)
- Care Coordination (from the National Quality Forum)--resources to increase communication between patients and providers and implement stronger record keeping and more efficient, patient-centered care.
- Why Not the Best (from the Commonwealth Fund)--a resource for health care professionals interested in tracking performance on various measures of health care quality.
- Aligning Forces for Quality (from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation)--an effort to lift the overall quality of health care in targeted communities, reduce racial and ethnic disparities and provide models for national reform, hat asks the people who get care, give care and pay for care to work together toward common, fundamental objectives to lead to better care.
- Community Quality Collaboratives--community-based organizations of multiple stakeholders, including health care providers, purchasers (employers, employer coalitions, Medicaid and others), health plans, and consumer advocacy organizations, that are working together to transform health care at the local level.
