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Volume 7: No. 6, November 2010
MOBILIZING ACTION TOWARD COMMUNITY HEALTH (MATCH)
Partnerships to Improve Community
Health: An Interview With Professor David Kindig of MATCH (Part 2)
00:00
Fran Kritz: I’m Fran Kritz, editor of
the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation Public Health page. What’s next for the county health rankings? We
recently asked that question of David Kindig, co-principal investigator of the
MATCH Project, Mobilizing Action Toward Community Health, which is based at the
University of Wisconsin and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. MATCH
released the first set of county health rankings — health parameters measured in
every county of the country — and will re-release the updated measures in February
2011. Here’s what he had to say.
00:33
Dr David Kindig: The MATCH acronym of our project with Robert Wood Johnson
stands for Mobilizing Action Towards Community Health. And the rankings are
hopefully the mobilization of getting people aware of how they rank and where
their opportunities for improvement are. But you know, that, in some ways, is the
easy part. Don’t tell my colleagues who have to do the rankings that because it’s
hard work here at our institute. But how do you know, once you’ve mobilized
action, you know, what do you do? You know, to sort of move these, move these
outcomes and move these metrics. And that’s the work that’s going on, going on
in the future and we have a tag, “take action,” part of that website but I think
that the attention — these have raised attention in the public and private
sector, in foundations and in CDC. And even on Friday, the Surgeon General
talked about the release of the National Public Health and Prevention Strategy
that’s going to roll out by March. And so, there’s lots going on, you know,
beyond here but we don’t yet have the answers. We know how to measure the
outcomes pretty well, I mean there’s ways we can do better on that but, but the
whole thing about finding the right kind of financial and nonfinancial
incentives, which was last month, and partnerships across sectors to pull it out,
to make it happen.
02:00
I mean, this is still a challenge for us and you know, one of the issues
around partnerships is, for these kind of tough outcomes, you know, there’s not
a single entity that’s accountable. That’s one of the problems, you know?
Different sectors have different pieces of the action; the government, the
private sector, businesses, schools, whatever. Actually put in a plug for my
blog, improvingpopulationhealth.org, and I’ve blogged twice on this one, about
who is accountable? Which is really a partnership kind of a blog. And then
another one about, on, do we need a super integrator? Which is sort of an idea
about pulling all of these partnerships together, so any readers might want to
check that out as well. So you’re right, there’s a lot to be done in terms of
making movement. But I think we’re under way and I tell you, I’ve been slogging
in this pop health field for a while and the last 5 or 6 years it’s a
little bit of a different story than it was 10 or 15 years ago. So that’s
hopeful.
03:00
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