Public Health 2030 Scenarios: Foresight for Health Departments

The context for public health continues to change, and what public health will do in the decades ahead is an open question. Health departments can use scenarios to consider plausible alternative paths for the field and their jurisdictions in order to choose the best way forward. In my presentation, I will

1. Provide highlights from national and local public health scenarios that go out to the year 2030 and explore a range of forces and offer pathways to expectable, challenging, and visionary futures for public health.
2. Discuss recommendations for strategy and action. National recommendations for the public health field and other stakeholders were developed at a national Public Health 2030 workshop in March 2014 with participants from associations, local health departments, academia, government, policy think tanks and non-profits, business, health care, and philanthropy. Strategic areas discussed include improving community resilience, building public health infrastructure and capacity, creating health equity, and ensuring the right to health and health care.

This special session will also provide a discussion of implications, recommendations, and insights that leaders from public health agencies (PHAs) gained for their planning and policymaking from using local public health scenarios. PHAs that participated in the Public Health 2030 project are Cuyahoga County Board of Health, OH; Boston Public Health Commission, MA; Fargo Cass Public Health, ND; and the Virginia Department of Health, VA.