Session: Community Health Planning and Regulation: Operationalizing a Communitarian Ethic

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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

5152.0: Wednesday, November 08, 2006: 2:30 PM-4:00 PM

Oral

Community Health Planning and Regulation: Operationalizing a Communitarian Ethic

Community-oriented planning is planning for services that are seen as appropriate by the communities they serve. By encouraging participation and collaboration among stakeholders, it empowers both individuals and communities and increasingly serves as a social conscience for the growing power of the marketplace. Health systems must embody a public decision-making process which is sensitive to community values and the concerns of consumers, providers, payers, and the needs of underserved populations. That public process must provide broadly representative mechanisms for identifying community needs, assessing capacity to meet those needs, allocating resources, and resolving conflicts. These goals are the best way of assuring accountability and equity in the design and direction of the future healthcare system. Primarily a function of governmental and not-for-profit agencies, such planning has been instrumental in the exercise of sound stewardship of the public's resources, but it has been slowly disappearing over the last 25 years. There is therefore an ever-growing need to revitalize it in order to improve the health status of all Americans. In this session, four presenters will discuss different approaches toward managing community health in ways responsive to communities. These approaches will also incorporate examples of the development of community health policy. The presenters will describe • Community health planning that provides forums for public information and decisionmaking, and assists government in making a more rational allocation of resources; • Public health methodologies for planning with communities to promote better health; • State regulatory processes that serve to bring order to health service development and ensure a more responsible marketplace; and • Public policy issues unique to planning and regulation.

Learning Objectives: At the close of the session, attendees should be better able to recognize, define, and assess • The roles played by community health planning in organizing, educating, and empowering communities to participate in rationalizing their health care delivery systems; • The planning models and attendant data available to local public health organizations in assessing and prioritizing community needs; • State review processes and licensure standards as reflecting the public interest; and • How health planning and regulation can address public policy debates involving conflicting societal issues.

Organizer(s):

John Steen

Moderator(s):

John Steen

2:30 PM

Applying health planning techniques in public health