Establishing a public health and primary care partnership as the backbone of a healthy community

In debates on health reform, the argument too often focuses solely on health care. Primary care experts are the go-to sources for analysis of health reform issues, and their perspective is funding, access to and delivery of quality healthcare. The essential role of public health to provide the environments, conditions and services that enable people to prevent disease, promote health and manage chronic conditions outside the healthcare system is all too often forgotten. We in public health know that even in a fully-insured population receiving regular healthcare services, human health will suffer without healthy environments and access to clean water, smokefree air, sidewalks, healthy food and other public health priorities.

Oregon's Department of Human Services, Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention Section, developed a message platform and graphic tool to articulate the intersection between and essential need for both public health and primary care, and is using it to engage the primary care community as a key advocate and partner for healthy communities.

In this session we will discuss the gap between public health and primary care, the need for this tool, the process for developing and vetting the messages with key audiences, the use of the final product as an advocacy and outreach vehicle, and reactions from the primary care and public health communities.