Health Promotion and Disease Prevention

Pillar Co-Chairs

Jose Montero and Yvonne Goldsberry

About the Health Promotion and Disease Prevention (HPDP) Pillar

The work of the Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Pillar Project focuses on decreasing the leading preventable causes of illness and death among New Hampshire citizens through collaboration, evidence-based information, and sound policy recommendations. Our aim is to strengthen the public health system, integrate population health and clinical care systems, and work towards increased health and well-being of all New Hampshire citizens.

Background

Over the decade long initiative, the work of the Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Pillar Group will focus on decreasing the leading causes of illness and death among New Hampshire citizens. We will do this through collaboration, evidence-based information, and sound policy recommendations to strengthen the public health system and will work towards increased health and well-being of all New Hampshire citizens.

As its first project, the HPDP Pillar Group produced the Pound of Prevention report in 2007 which identified the major underlying causes of mortality and morbidity in NH as unhealthy eating, sedentary lifestyle, tobacco, and unhealthy alcohol use.  Building on this report, the HPDP Pillar Group then partnered with leading NH organizations, including Breathe NH, New Futures, and the HNHfoundation to promote the use of evidence-based interventions and policy to reduce the impact of these identified risk factors. 

Based on the premise that collaborative health promotion efforts involving public health and medicine play a critical role in reducing the burden of preventable disease in NH, the HPDP Pillar Group began its work on this strategic issue in 2009.  The Group started by gathering information on projects and programs taking place around the state directed at the coordination of public health sector efforts with medical care sector activity.  Through this process, the HPDP Pillar Group: 1) gained an understanding of the breadth, depth, and range of integration activity occurring across the state; and 2) identified ways that the Citizens Health Initiative could move this pillar activity from study and review to support for specific actions and programs.  A summary of these case studies is available here.  A compilation of the key themes gleaned from these case studies for supporting integration projects involving public health and medicine is available in the 2009 HPDP Summary.

In 2011 the HPDP Pillar Group focused its efforts on promoting awareness statewide about the Strategic Plan for Integrating New Hampshire’s Public Health and Medical Care Systems, discerning opportunities to link the work of the HPDP Pillar Group with the work of the Payment Reform/Accountable Care Organization Pilot, and developing tools and strategies to increase awareness about the concept of  integration and/or facilitate the linking of medicine, public health, and other community stakeholders to address NH’s health behavior priorities of healthy eating, active living, tobacco cessation, and healthy alcohol use.

For 2012 the HPDP Pillar Group plans to undertake a concrete, applied project that: 1) directly advances recommendations included in the Strategic Plan for Integrating New Hampshire’s Public Health and Medical Care Systems and 2) links the HPDP Pillar Group work with that of the Initiative’s Medical Home Project.

For more information on the HPDP Pillar Group contact Holly Tutko.

Reports and Publications

2012

2011

2010

2009

  2008

  2007