Health Care Community Discussion
You are invited to participate in a Health Care Community Discussion, requested by President-elect Obama and HHS Secretary-designee Tom Daschle, to help guide wellness and integrated health care practices into the next health reform effort.
TOPIC: Refining a Wellness Initiative for the Nation (WIN)
DATE: Monday, December 29 from 1-3:30pm (EST)
LOCATION: Samueli Institute, with national, toll-free, call-in line available
RSVP to mqureshi@siib.org or 703-299-4826 to receive the address or call-in number.
This meeting will be 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. During this event, we will discuss the Wellness Initiative for the Nation (WIN), a white paper drafted for guiding wellness and integrative health care practices in the next health reform effort. You can download the latest version of the WIN concept and Participant Guide here.
We will submit a summary of our Health Care Community Discussion and this WIN document to the Transition Health Policy Team for posting on the web site for the Office of the President-Elect. Senator Daschle is attending several of these Health Care Community Discussions, and he and his team will review the information we submit following our gathering. Visit http://change.gov/page/s/hcdiscussion for more details on the 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 train wellness workers/coaches, create a wellness IT toolkit (an “avatar”) for providing evidence based information on illness prevention and self-management, and economic and policy incentives to create 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.
We have aligned WIN concepts with the new administration’s plan for health reform (called The Health Care Delivery System: A Blueprint for Reform), Healthy People 2010 goals, recommendations such as the Wellness Trust, the Federal Health Reserve proposed by Senator Daschle, recommendations of the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy, and the Institute of Medicine’s reports on health care quality, transformation, and integrative medicine. Thus, the proposal fits directly into the plans of Daschle, Lambrew, Kennedy, Harkin, Mikulski and other 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.
This is a truly unique opportunity to contribute to a health reform framework that is compelling, innovative and doable. Space is limited, so RSVP as soon as possible to Maria Qureshi at mqureshi@siib.org or 703-299-4826 to receive the address or toll-free call-in number. On behalf of the Presidential Transition Health Policy Team, thank you for helping fulfill President-elect Obama’s commitment to health care reform from the ground up, by participating in this Discussion.