Your investment in Whole-Person Population-Centered Preventive-Health, will fund our ability to create and sustain “Sick-Care To Well-Care Partnerships,” with underserved communities.
These partnerships are based on a recognition and shared understanding that Social Determinants of Health starts in homes, schools, workplaces, neighborhoods, and communities.
Social determinants of health are conditions in the environments in which people are born, live, learn , work, play, worship, and age that affect a wide range of health, functioning, and quality-of-life outcomes and risks in the following five areas:
1. Economic Stability
2. Education
3. Health and Health Care
4. Neighborhood and Built Environment
5. Social and Community Context
Each of these five determinant areas reflects a number of key issues that make up the underlying factors in the arena of Social determinants of Health.
- Economic Stability
- Employment
- Food Insecurity
- Housing Instability
- Poverty
- Transporation
- Education
- Early Childhood Education and Development
- Enrollment in Higher Education
- High School Graduation
- Language and Literacy
- Social and Community Context
- Civic Participation
- Discrimination
- Incarceration
- Social Cohesion
- Health and Health Care
- Access to Health Care
- Access to Primary Care
- Health Literacy
- Neighborhood and Built Environment
- Access to Foods that Support Healthy Eating Patterns
- Crime, and Violence
- Environmental Conditions
- Quality of Housing
Whole-Person Population-Centered Preventive-Health represents a paradigmatic shift from the concept of selling healthcare services to selling health.
A starting point for recognizing the need to shift to this new care model is this: Public hospitals and health systems have targeted the most vulnerable and the most expensive population of patients, when their health systems are ill-equipped to adequately and effectively meet their unmet needs.
Public hospitals and health systems also deliver the lowest value and lowest quality of care and services that:
- Provides little or no net benefit in specific clinical scenarios.
- Cost patients, purchasers, and American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars every year.
- Diverts scarce resources from higher-value services that can be used to benefit undeserved communities.
- Do not offer underserved communities scalable life-changing interventions that leads to a better way of live a healthier way of life.
One of the main reasons traditional hospitals and health systems are ill suited to deliver “Whole-Person Health,” is because these patients typically have multiple chronic medical conditions, significant mental illness, substance abuse issues, and/or are homeless.
They have health needs that must be met in multiple locations — hospitals, primary care settings, mental health agencies, substance abuse organizations, social service agencies, homeless shelters, and the criminal justice system — highlighting the importance of care coordination and of addressing basic needs, such as housing, alongside medical needs.
Without our Interventions and Solutions Whole-Person Population-Centered Preventive-Health:
- Alarming health warnings indicating higher rates of diseases, illnesses and death, will continue to be met with slow and inadequate responses;
- Systemic transformation efforts that require fundamental restructuring will continue to be ignored, delayed and misdirected by influential status quo gatekeepers with the reputation and clout to resist change, innovation and deny funding;
- Neglecting institutionalized failed practices will continue to give license to disparity-plagued sick-care and negative social determinants of health that prey on underserved and unprotected communities to devalue and dehumanize the quality of their lives with no relief in sight;
- The protectors of institutionalized failed practices will continue to not only make the most out of the billions of dollars that NYS send to Brooklyn. They also ensure no one is left standing to transform community health;
- These crippling conditions will not only continue to paralyze transformation efforts, they also continue to further erode and diminish community value and serve as gateways to gentrification;
If you recognize the need and urgency to help these communities transform their lives, then please:
The concept of “Whole-Person Population-Centered Preventive-Health” arose from the realization that the traditional medical system is not only expensive, it is also ineffective at addressing the social determinants of health.
Addressing the social determinants of health, not only includes institutional systemic changes, it also includes transforming the individual and organizational T-BACK$™ (Thinking, Behavior, Attitude, Communication, Knowledge and $kills) of Communities, students, health care professionals, health care organizations, health educational institutions, government entities and other partners.
“Whole-Person Health” includes a wide range of services: medical, public health, mental health, substance abuse, and social services. Our innovative interventions and solutions are needed in population health because traditional hospitals and the health systems they employ are not designed or structured to deliver “Whole-Person” outcomes.
