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Ideas and Opinions |6 December 2016

The Most Critical Health Care Issues for the Next President to Address

Stephen M. Shortell, PhD, MPH, MBA; Diane Rittenhouse, MD, MPH

Article, Author, and Disclosure Information
Author, Article, and Disclosure Information
This article was published at www.annals.org on 1 November 2016.
  • From University of California, Berkeley, and University of California, San Francisco, California.

    Disclosures: Disclosures can be viewed at www.acponline.org/authors/icmje/ConflictOfInterestForms.do?msNum=M16-2471.

    Requests for Single Reprints: Stephen M. Shortell, PhD, MPH, MBA, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, 50 University Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720.

    Current Author Addresses: Dr. Shortell: School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, 50 University Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720.

    Dr. Rittenhouse: Department of Family Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, 500 Parnassus Avenue, Room MU 308-E, San Francisco, CA 94143-0900.

    Author Contributions: Conception and design: S.M. Shortell, D. Rittenhouse.

    Drafting of the article: S.M. Shortell, D. Rittenhouse.

    Critical revision of the article for important intellectual content: S.M. Shortell, D. Rittenhouse.

    Final approval of the article: S.M. Shortell, D. Rittenhouse.

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FULL TEXT
The most important action the next president can take to advance health and health care in the United States is to articulate an overarching vision and set of core principles to guide the nation toward better health. The vision should be to ensure that all people living in the United States have the opportunity to live healthy, productive lives. This vision would recognize the decades of research revealing that the social determinants of health—our physical and social environments and health behaviors—are the major determinants of our health (1).
Five core principles that the president could highlight are as follows. First, all Americans have a right to receive health care that meets their needs at every stage of their lives. Second, all Americans have an obligation to invest in their health and that of their families by engaging in healthy behaviors. Third, governmental and private cross-sector organizations—such as health care providers and insurers, public health, education, agriculture, housing, transportation, criminal justice, and community development—must work together to create conditions in communities that support the health of their people. Fourth, to reduce and eventually eliminate inequalities in health, greater resources should go to states and communities where the greatest barriers to creating healthy conditions exist. Finally, all unnecessary, harmful, and wasteful care should be eliminated from our health care system.
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Shortell SM, Rittenhouse D. The Most Critical Health Care Issues for the Next President to Address. Ann Intern Med. ;165:816–817. doi: 10.7326/M16-2471

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Published: Ann Intern Med. 2016;165(11):816-817.

DOI: 10.7326/M16-2471

Published at www.annals.org on 1 November 2016

©
2016 American College of Physicians
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