Contributor

Jeffrey Levi

Executive Director, Trust for America's Health

Related Link: http://www.healthyamericans.org

Biography provided by participant

Jeffrey Levi, PhD, is Executive Director of Trust for America's Health, where he leads the organization's advocacy for a modernized public health system. Dr. Levi has authored reports and testified before Congress on disaster preparedness, environmental health, chronic disease and the obesity epidemic. He is also an Associate Professor at George Washington University's Department of Health Policy, where his research has focused on HIV/AIDS, Medicaid, and integrating public health with America�s healthcare system. He served as an associate editor of the American Journal of Public Health, and was Deputy Director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy. He has appeared as an expert commentator on CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS and Bloomberg TV. Trust for America's Health is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to saving lives by protecting the health of every community and working to make disease prevention a national priority.

Recent Responses

February 1, 2010 05:20 PM

Improving Health Tied to Improving Econ.

In a time of very tight financial constraints, we all need to be pretty realistic about our expectations. In the context of a freeze on overall domestic non-defense/security discretionary spending, the Obama Administration did show its commitment to supporting a strong public health system that focuses on prevention. Obviously, we’d love to see big increases for public health, however, this budget, combined with large investments about to be released under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), will significantly increase the capacity of communities to respond to our pressing prevention needs.

However, the question of health reform still looms large. Unless we take action to improve the health of Americans, we lose an important opportunity to reign in health spending. Treating chronic diseases is one of the biggest drivers of health care costs – and until we focus more on prevention in a sustained and comprehensive way, we’re never going to get these costs under control.

Without reform that includes a long-term commitment of resourc

January 21, 2010 03:42 PM

Prevention: Moving Health Reform Forward

As we turn the page to the next stage of debates around health reform, we should remember there is a whole lot in the current Senate and House bills that is popular, already in close agreement, and could be the impetus for moving forward.

The prevention and wellness sections of the bills could help do just that.

A public opinion survey released in November 2009 by Trust for America's Health (TFAH) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) found that disease prevention is one of the most popular parts of health reform. In fact, 71 percent of Americans favor an increased investment in disease prevention.

Investing in disease prevention receives majority support from across the political spectrum (85 percent of Democrats, 59 percent of Republicans, and 68 percent of Independents) and across the country (72 percent in the Northeast, 73 percent in the South, 71 percent in the West, and 69 percent in the Midwest), according to the poll, conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and Public Opinion Strategies.

The prevention provisions in the two b