The de Beaumont Foundation today applauded the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for their launch of HI-5, an initiative highlighting non-clinical, community-wide approaches to health. As the public health and healthcare communities continue to find new evidence that health outcomes are largely determined by social, economic, and environmental factors, HI-5 provides an important resource for policymakers and government agencies at the local, state, and federal levels.
“This initiative makes it possible to expand upon some of our greatest public health achievements of the past 50 years, from tobacco laws and food safety standards to seat belt mandates and vaccination requirements,” said Ed Hunter, president and CEO of the de Beaumont Foundation. “It’s critical that we focus on using such policy approaches, and HI-5 provides an evidence-based manual for policymakers at all levels of government to improve population health.”
The HI-5 initiative’s suggested policies fall in two main categories: “Making Health The Easy Choice” and “Addressing the Social Determinants of Health.” The de Beaumont Foundation has actively supported these goals in its grant portfolios.
In the coming year, the de Beaumont Foundation will do even more to make policy approaches to public health a cornerstone of its work. This fall, CityHealth, an initiative of the de Beaumont Foundation, will publicly launch. CityHealth will provide a package of proven policy solutions for city governments to implement. CityHealth will join other signature de Beaumont grants seeking to address the social determinants of health, including the BUILD Health Challenge and work on economic modeling to help cities identify effective policies.
