Samueli Institute Home Page News Story

Health Care Community Discussion

We convened a Health Care Community Discussion on December 29, to help guide wellness and integrated health care practices into the next health reform effort.  Over 150 professionals from a wide variety of disciplines participated, either in person at the Samueli Institute or via teleconference, in an engaging and productive discussion around

• specific questions requested by President-elect Obama and HHS Secretary-designee Tom Daschle in support of their goal to provide quality, affordable health care for all Americans, and
• the Wellness Initiative for the Nation (WIN) concept, a white paper drafted for guiding wellness and integrative health care practices in the next health reform effort.

Reminder to meeting participants:

Please complete your responses to the discussion questions and survey by January 5 by visiting the survey web site. Your responses are critical to the formulation of our group submission on health care reform to the Transition Health Policy Team. If you have questions about completing this form, please contact Matthew Fritts at mfritts@siib.org or 240-447-3364. Thank you again for your participation and efforts!

Background information on our Health Care Community Discussion

This meeting was hosted by Wayne Jonas, M.D. and the Systems Wellness Advancement Team (SWAT). SWAT is a group of leading health and policy experts in comprehensive lifestyle self-care and integrative health care practices, science, and policy. We will submit a summary of our Health Care Community Discussion and the WIN document to the Transition Health Policy Team for posting on the web site for the Office of the President-Elect.

• Meeting Agenda (application/pdf, 201.0 kB, info)
• Participant Guide (application/pdf, 91.8 kB, info)
• Details on the Health Care Community Discussion process

About the Wellness Initiative for the Nation (WIN) concept

The WIN concept addresses strategies for creating human health and productivity, saving costs and enhancing wellness with a concerted focus on core lifestyle change and integrative health care practices. WIN can also prevent the looming fiscal disaster in our health care system.  WIN proposes a national effort to create:

• A knowledge innovation exchange/translation program;
• Professional health and wellness coaches and a health corps;
• A health and wellness information toolkit for providing evidence based information on illness prevention and self-management; and
• Economic incentives for a wellness culture and industry.

The WIN document describes how we as a nation could focus on the specific areas of prevention, health promotion and self-management via lifestyle approaches and integrative health practices. Download the latest draft of the WIN document here (application/pdf, 571.1 kB, info).

Alignment of the WIN

We have aligned WIN concepts with the overarching goals of the following concepts, policies and documents:

• The Obama-Biden plan for health reform (application/pdf, 82.1 kB, info);
• The new administration’s health reform recommendations, described in The Health Care Delivery System:  A Blueprint for Reform;
• Healthy People 2010 goals, specifically the focal areas on Increasing Quality and Years of Healthy Life and Eliminating Health Disparities;
• A Wellness Trust, described in Promoting prevention and preempting costs: A new wellness trust for the United States;
• The Federal Health Reserve described by Senator Daschle and proposed in Bill S. 2105 (9/27/2007) (application/pdf, 168.4 kB, info);
• Recommendations of the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy;
• The Institute of Medicine’s reports on health care quality, transformation,  and integrative medicine.

Thus, the proposal fits directly into the plans of the new administration and leaders in health care reform.

About the Samueli Institute

The Samueli Institute is the leading non-profit organization doing research on healing practices and currently conducts research with hospital systems, schools and runs several major programs with the Department of Defense and Veteran’s Health Administration on resilience, wellness, and chronic disease prevention and management with behavioral and integrative health care practices. These and other programs could be models for use in WIN.