Health is vital to the economy, productivity, and national security of the United States, and has been from the founding of our country. Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson recognized the importance of public health interventions. General George Washington protected his army from the scourge of smallpox (a threat he perceived to be potentially greater "than…the Sword of the Enemy") by requiring then-controversial smallpox inoculations for new recruits of the Continental Army. President Thomas Jefferson promoted vaccination throughout the country and even instructed Meriwether Lewis to bring immunizations on his pioneering westward journey to share with people in new settlements of America. Thus, since the founding of our country, Presidential leadership has played a key role in promoting the health of the United States.
Applying historical perspectives from past Presidents and Administrations, the Health and Medicine Program of the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress (CSPC) frames health care challenges and opportunities for the next President, the Executive Branch and Congress to enhance public policymaking. The program examines such health issues as: current Federal leadership and governance in U.S. health and medicine; escalating health care costs; the nearly 47 million uninsured people living in the United States today; profound health disparities; an aging population with a concomitant chronic disease epidemic; the recent decline in funding for biomedical research; ethical issues arising with scientific discovery; the impact of globalization with the threat of bioterrorism; and emerging concerns such as obesity and avian flu. Another focus of the program is exploring the use of health diplomacy as a foreign policy tool.
Commission on U.S. Federal Leadership in Health and Medicine: Charting Future Directions
As part of its Strengthening America’s Future Initiative, CSPC’s Health and Medicine Program is organizing working sessions on critical health policy challenges facing the new Administration. The next President must address the suite of major health care concerns affecting the future of the American health care system: dramatically escalating health care costs; a lack of quality, effectiveness, and efficiency; the application of information technology; strengthening medical research and public health practice; and investing in global health, among others.
On November 19, 2008, CSPC’s Health and Medicine Program convened its first meeting, co-chaired by Rear Admiral Susan Blumenthal, M.D., M.P.A., Director of CSPC’s Health and Medicine Program and former U.S. Assistant Surgeon General, and Denis A. Cortese, M.D., President and CEO of Mayo Clinic, to consider these critical health and medical policy challenges and opportunities. Drawing on their diverse backgrounds and expertise, members of the Commission on U.S. Federal Leadership in Health and Medicine: Charting Future Directions are discussing and framing recommendations for consideration by the new Administration during the first 100 days in office and its first year of work. Serving as a resource for expert recommendations outside of the federal government, the Commission is proposing Executive Orders, Advisory Councils, Commissions, and other mechanisms and strategies that might help advance federal efforts to improve health. The group is also framing selected health policy proposals for President Obama’s Administration to consider and making recommendations for reorganizing the federal government’s infrastructure to better address the health challenges and opportunities ahead. The Commission will prepare a report of these recommended actions aimed at enhancing federal leadership and governance in health and medicine in future years.
Peace through Health: The Palestine/Israel Health Initiative
Health can serve as a bridge to peace. Countries cannot achieve political stability or flourish economically with unhealthy people. Over the past decade, however, restrictions on mobility and a tense political climate have rendered cooperative “peace through health” programs between Palestinian and Israeli health experts quite challenging. Despite this, innovative and committed Palestinian and Israeli professionals have continued to work together in the fields of public health and medicine. Their cooperative work builds trust and reconciliation when patients receive lifesaving treatments; when health systems are built; when diseases and epidemics are monitored and prevented; when health information is shared; when collaborative research is undertaken; and when new generations of professionals are trained together.
During the first phase of its work, the Palestine/Israel Health Initiative (PIHI) of the Center (supported by a grant from USAID), identified and mapped more than 40 cooperative health projects between Palestinians and Israelis that are operating in the region, many of which were unaware of other organizations’ existence and mission. Faced with significant physical barriers to intergroup peace efforts in the area, some organizations in other sectors of development—such as youth education—have turned to the Internet and to web social networking tools to facilitate cooperation across divides. Currently, these tools are underutilized in the health sector, yet hold the promise to promote peaceful and productive cooperation between Palestinian and Israeli professionals.
CSPC’s Health and Medicine Program is working on a two-pronged project for PIHI to harness the power of information technology (IT) to bring together Palestinians and Israelis with the goal of advancing regional health. PIHI has developed a “health e-Commons,” a health professional networking website that has linked experts across the region. PIHI will convene a Palestinian/Israeli Council of Advisors, which will partner with U.S. health experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to assemble health education and training materials for dissemination via the region’s first comprehensive, multilingual health website, www.HealthMiddleEast.org (in development). PIHI has also proposed to sponsor an innovative conference in Jerusalem on the application of health IT and new media to advance health and peacemaking in Palestine and Israel.
Staff Contact
For more information, please contact Susan Blumenthal, Director of CSPC’s Health and Medicine Program, via This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or at 202-872-9800.
