Health and Wellness

THE CRISIS BEYOND THE HEALTH CARE CRISIS

A Challenge and a Declaration

Draft 7/10/09

If any existing health care reform plan in the United States is fully implemented and funded, there will still be an enormous crisis in the health of the Nation. No amount of money being poured into the health care system as envisioned in any current plan will generate the healthy individuals, families and communities in Utah and the Nation that we all aspire to achieve. Obesity, lack of fitness, poor nutrition, other at risk behaviors and low coping skills for stress and for social and emotional issues will still all be hindering the quality of life of the people of America.

And yet there are powerful evidence based approaches for supporting people and groups to be more responsible for and successful in achieving their own health and well being in the broadest sense that can be embedded in the health care system as well as in the very fabric of our communities. As people become more knowledgeable concerning their own health and well being and as they take on more responsibility in this regard for themselves and those around them, the innate capacity for personal wellness increases, and with it, the tendencies towards greater endurance, gratitude, hope and the experience of joy. In addition there is a science and art for creating healthy communities which generates collective flourishing greater than merely an aggregation of healthy individuals within a community.


The innate capacity for health and self management of chronic conditions is enormous and yet remains significantly untapped. Unleashing this capacity should be half of the equation of health care reform and yet it gets perhaps one percent of the attention and less than that of the available funding.


Under the banner of Utah Health Care Vision 2010, a multi-stakeholder coalition that has been working in multi-disciplinary groups in five different areas of health care reform since 2004*, representatives of virtually all of the groups in Utah doing promotion, private sector programs, public health, clinical work, scholarship and research in this arena convened in a summit meeting in Salt Lake City to begin to collaboratively work together. They pulled together perhaps for the first time universally shared Consensus Principles in this area, identified many best practices for evidence based approaches, and agreed on a common term for shared education and promotion: “wellness self management”.


They have formed the Wellness Self Management Network. The Network will first of all be attempting to change the narrative around health care reform and bring attention to this “crisis beyond the health care reform crisis”. It challenges the people and leadership of the State of Utah to come to better recognize their own capacities for health and self management and the creation of healthier communities and to come to grips with their own responsibilities in this regard. The Network is also becoming an active learning community, interconnecting existing programs and demonstration projects, and supporting new emergent demonstration projects and public policy that reflect Consensus Principles and evidence based approaches to wellness self management and healthy communities.


In addition the Network invites the people of the State of Utah to join with members of the Network and endorse the following Declaration:
*Access and affordability, quality and safety, seamless technology, wellness and health communities, workforce


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DECLARATION

OF

WELLNESS SELF MANAGEMENT

AND

HEALTHY COMMUNITIES

AS A PART OF

HEALTH CARE REFORM IN UTAH

Draft 7/10/09

Whereas, we pride ourselves in Utah on our spirit of self reliance and personal responsibility as well as our strong sense of community; and


Whereas evidence based principles and approaches of wellness self management and patterns of healthy communities have been established; and


Whereas, health care reform in Utah and the rest of the United States to date has tended not to include such principles, approaches and patterns.


NOW THEREFORE: It is hereby resolved:


Now is the time for us to step forward and achieve wellness self management and healthy communities in Utah in a way that dramatically transcends all prior approaches to health care reform and unleashes our individual and collective capacities for creating the healthiest people and communities in the Nation and the World.