“Creating more and better playspaces is something that is very important to us. Research shows that recreation improves a person’s physical and emotional well-being. Quality playspaces make recreation more fun. The more fun recreation is, the more likely it is that our citizens will engage it, leading up to a healthier, happier community. The Playful City USA program is the most distinguished program recognizing quality environments for recreation in the country.
Altarum Institute has released a report that highlights the Practice Change Fellows Program’s successful efforts to develop change leaders who spread innovations that improve the health of older adults.
Given our public interest in safety, one has to wonder how we have become so complacent about preventable illness and injury in medicine. Amazingly, 32 deaths trigger a nationwide recall on melon, but nearly 100,000 annual deaths from hospital infections (more than AIDS, car accidents and breast cancer combined) do not make news.
According to a new report, many states and the federal government do not have policies or laws that we know can protect citizens from injury, the leading cause of death for Americans under 44.
Warm summer days and evenings draw many people outside to enjoy the weather and the extended daylight. As families take advantage of the pleasant conditions to take walks on local trails, ride bicycles on pathways and streets, and play in parks, it’s important to remember that these leisurely activities are facilitated by the presence of active transportation supports in our communities: safe and attractive sidewalks, bicycle paths, multi-use paths, parks and other recreational areas.
In reading Dr. Hua Carroll’s January post here in the Health Policy Forum on the "Cultural Differences in the Treatment of Pain," two statements stood out to me:
1) The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has declared prescription drug abuse an epidemic, and
2) Fighting prescription pain medication abuse is an uphill battle. (1)
Readers of this blog are familiar with—and mostly supportive of—these two claims: (1) that social and environmental factors are stronger than health care services in shaping the population’s health, but (2) those factors are weaker than health care services in securing funding and public attention. Most of us are convinced that sending more funds and public support toward healthy food and exercise would do more to improve health than sending those funds toward high-cost medications or surgeries,
Your health shouldn’t be determined by where you live, but two new reports show that where you live, learn, work and play have a major impact on how healthy you are and how long you live. Disease rates and factors that influence health vary dramatically from neighborhood to neighborhood and region to region—and funding for public health and disease prevention programs also vary significantly from community to community and state to state.
The City of Niagara Falls was “spending a lot of money to maintain marginal courts where people didn’t want them anyway, and we were getting complaints from neighbors who lived nearby.” “We wanted to use all of that money to create one large-scale park with actual programming. It led to a much more elegant solution that let us do more things than anybody thought we’d get. – Thomas Desantis, Playing Smart, Maximizing the Potential of School and Community Property Through Joint Use Agreements
A major challenge of the current system of care for adults with functional limitations is the inability of middle-income individuals to protect themselves against the financial risk of needing and accessing available supports and services to help them remain in their homes and communities. Over 10 million Americans need supports and services today due to disabling conditions, and this figure will likely grow due to population aging. In 2008, the cost of this care totaled $264 billion, comprising public, private, and in-kind expenditures.
