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Partnership Pulse
| March/April 2014
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March and April were exciting months at Partnership for Prevention. Our new website to promote appropriate preventive aspirin use has launched, garnering praise and interest from around the country. We were asked to add our name to an important letter of appeal sent to Secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus, urging the Navy to stop selling tobacco. Reuters News Service picked up our newest Leading by Example publication of case studies on worksite wellness programs. And much more is underway.
At a recent bi-partisan briefing with the staff directors of congressional committees addressing health care, I listened as each outlined plans for supporting the development of new pharmaceuticals and other means of curing disease, but the word Prevention was only mentioned once - in passing - by one staffer. When I asked why, it set off a firestorm of response where virtually everyone said "Oh yeah... prevention! Yes, we want to support prevention, too." Prevention cannot be an afterthought!
Great work is being done by our staff, and we need your help to continue to keep prevention at the forefront of the reform and rebuilding of our nation's health care system. If you haven't renewed your membership or joined us yet, please do. Call or email me and let's talk about working together to support intelligent decision-making around prevention priorities! I welcome your personal communication!
| Elissa Matulis Myers
President & CEO
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Partnership Launches Website to Promote the Appropriate Use of Aspirin to Improve Health
|  With its Council on Aspirin for Health and Prevention, Partnership has developed and launched www.aspirinproject.org, an educational website to increase the appropriate use of low-dose aspirin to improve health. Aspirin can save lives, preventing heart attack, stroke, and cancer, but is not right for everyone. At www.aspirinproject.org, consumers and health care providers can get key information about aspirin through videos, fact sheets, and summaries of important research articles. Consumers are urged to have an informed conversation with their providers to decide if low-dose aspirin is right for them. For clinicians, counseling about daily, low-dose aspirin use is one of the highest value preventive services they can provide.
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New ActionToQuit Interview Discusses Tobacco in the Military
|  Last month, ActionToQuit interviewed Dr. Haddock of the National Development and Research Institutes about his research on tobacco use in the military. Tobacco use is higher among enlisted members of the military compared to the civilian population and tobacco products are sold at discount on military bases. Dr. Haddock cited research linking tobacco use to issues that compromise military readiness and shared his views on how the military can promote stronger and more consistent messages that tobacco use is harmful and unacceptable. Read the transcript to learn more about the exceptionalism of tobacco in the military
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Nutrition: Partnership and other organizations concerned about food marketing urged the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to recommend safeguards that protect young people from data-driven marketing practices that can harm their health. Youth are increasingly the target of aggressive online marketing tactics by food and beverage companies, usually for calorie-dense, nutrient-poor products. The OSTP will soon issue a report on "big data" practices to the President.
Tobacco: Partnership joined more than 30 other groups to urge FDA Commissioner, Mitch Zeller, to take quick regulatory action to make tobacco products less addictive and harmful. The Surgeon General's recent report on tobacco products found that although adult smoking rates have declined over the past 50 years, the risk of developing lung cancer has increased. The report concludes that today's cigarettes are more harmful and more addictive than cigarettes produced in the 1950s due to changes in their design and composition. The FDA has regulatory authority over tobacco products under the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act.
Partnership and five other premier organizations encouraged the Secretary of the Navy to adopt and implement his proposal to eliminate the sale of tobacco on all bases and ships. Tobacco use is significantly higher among military personnel than in the civilian population.
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Progress Being Made Around Diabetes, But Prevalence Continues to Rise
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 A New England Journal of Medicine article found that rates of five common complications from diabetes declined substantially from 1990 to 2010. Those complications are lower-extremity amputation, end-stage renal disease, heart attack, stroke, and death from hyperglycemic crisis. These reductions likely reflect better delivery of clinical care to patients with diabetes, improvements in the performance of the overall health care system, and efforts to help those with diabetes self-manage their disease. Although this study presents good news, it also found that prevalence of diabetes tripled during the study period of 1990 - 2010. A separate study has revealed that nearly one in 10 adults has been diagnosed with the disease. That study found that fewer people have undiagnosed diabetes, which is good news because once diabetes is diagnosed, people can take steps to get the disease under control.
Diabetes prevalence will continue to rise as the U.S. population ages and remains obese. Health promotion efforts to reduce obesity and tobacco use, improve diet, and increase physical activity are as important as ever to help slow the diabetes epidemic and reduce cardiovascular-related complications in those with the disease.
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New Prevention Recommendations
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The Community Preventive Services Task Force recently recommended .jpg) publicized sobriety checkpoint programs to reduce alcohol-impaired driving. The recommendation was based on strong evidence of effectiveness in reducing alcohol-impaired driving.
In March and April, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) issued final recommendation statements for the two services listed below.
Illicit Drug Use: The USPSTF found insufficient evidence to recommend primary care behavioral interventions to reduce illicit drug and non-medical pharmaceutical use in children and adolescents that do not have a substance abuse disorder (I grade). Dementia: The USPSTF found insufficient evidence to recommend universal screening for cognitive impairment in adults over age 65 who show no signs or symptoms I grade).
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County Health Rankings Now Available
| Want to see how healthy your county is? Visit the 2014 edition of the County Health Rankings and Roadmaps to find out. Learn which factors impact the health of your county the most and use the resources in the Action Center to help address them. Technical assistance is also available
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New Resource for Implementing Community Guide Interventions
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The Community Guide Toolbox is a collection of tools and resources to help public health professionals and other practitioners implement Community Guide-recommended interventions. The Community Health Promotion Handbook: Action Guides to Improve Community Health, a set of implementation guides developed by Partnership for Prevention and the CDC, is included in the "Plan an Intervention" section.
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Register Now for Health Disparities Workshop
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The 12th annual "Disparities in Health in America Workshop: Working Towards Social Justice" will be held at Prairie View A&M University College of Nursing in Houston, Texas from June 23 - 28, 2014. The goal of the six-day workshop is to provide a comprehensive understanding of health disparities, to investigate approaches to enhancing health equity, and to provide participants with a broad base of knowledge related to a bio-psychosocial approach in addressing health disparities in a minority and the medically under-served populations. Find the registration form here
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National Conference on Immunization & Health Coalitions
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Join your fellow vaccine advocates at the 11th National Conference on Immunization and Health Coalitions on May 21-23, 2014 in Seattle. Attendees will learn how to use collaboration and partnership to improve the health status of their communities while engaging with world-class speakers, attending the first-ever NCIHC Film Festival, and enjoying other unique opportunities.
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Partnership for Prevention was founded in 1991 by leaders dedicated to making disease prevention and health promotion a national priority and America a healthier nation. Partnership seeks to increase understanding and use of clinical preventive services and population-based prevention to improve health. |
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