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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Recorded presentation

Thomas C. Ricketts, PhD, Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 725 Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard CB# 7590, UNC, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7590, 27599-7590, tom_ricketts@unc.edu

America's Health Rankings have been an important overall metric of the nation's health and an comparative indicator for states. The rankings have stimulated states and communities agencies to modify or implement programs and policies that are designed to improve population health. However, there are emerging trends that require the rankings to be re-assessed: the compression of mortality that makes some components of the rankings potentially obsolete and raises the importance and applicability health care inputs to a summary measures of population health and the development of genetic and genomic screens and interventions that emphasize both personal choices and environmental controls. This presentation will describe how those two major trends have been factored into the Rankings process and how the ranking can then be interpreted by its target audience to help foster more effective policy change. This has been accomplished by expanding the “components of change” model that guides the development of the rankings to give greater emphasis to the two key issues: clinical care and its effects on mortality in later life and genetic and genomic interventions and overall prevention. The policy responses that make use of the Rankings include use of the rankings for: 1. structured response to the media to highlight state and community level programs to increase visibility and effect; 2. Use in teaching in public health programs to help students learn how to cope with medical attention as they craft management decisions and strategic policy; and 3. Creating locally applicable rankings.

Learning Objectives:

• Those attending will understand how the America's Health Rankings have generated policy responses, be able to describe those policy responses, and will be able to assess how they can be used in their own organizations and communities

Keywords: Policy/Policy Development, Indicators

Related Web page: www.unitedhealthfoundation.org

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No

Recorded presentation