Key Concepts from the DRAFT Wellness Initiative for the Nation (WIN)

Wayne Jonas, MD and the Systems Wellness Advancement Team

The Wellness Initiative for the Nation (WIN) will align with overarching goals of the Blueprint and Healthy People 2010 (Increasing Quality and Years of Healthy Life and Eliminating Health Disparities), link to recommendations such as the Wellness Trust, a Federal Health Reserve, and the Institute of Medicine’s reports on health care quality, transformation and integrated medicine; and reflect the recommendations of the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy.

PURPOSE

The purpose of the Wellness Initiative for the Nation (WIN) is to prevent disease and illness, enhance health and productivity, and create well-being and flourishing for the people of America. WIN can also prevent the looming fiscal disaster in our health care system. In fact, effectively addressing preventable chronic illness is probably our only hope for changing a system that costs too much and is delivering less health and little care to fewer people.

RECOMMENDATIONS

The primary recommendation is to create a Wellness Initiative for the Nation (WIN) within the new “independent agency” proposed to guide and oversee health reform in the new administration, as described in the recent report, The Health Care Delivery System: A Blueprint for Reform (the Blueprint). WIN will provide program analysis; develop policies, guidelines and curriculum; set standards; and establish incentives and mechanisms focused on prevention of key chronic diseases and the promotion of health through lifestyle change and integrated health practices. WIN will establish a series of evidence-guided programs on prevention and wellness linked to policy changes that support the efforts in national health care reform. The initial step of WIN is to create a working group and coordinating office within a new health care agency, the sole purpose of which is to develop policies and programs for chronic disease prevention and health promotion through comprehensive lifestyle and integrated health care approaches with specific demonstrated effectiveness. Other specific recommendations are as follows:

  1. Systems Wellness System
    • Create a national innovation network to continuously evaluate and translate effective prevention and health promotion practices into delivery tools and policy changes.
    • Create a learning community that evaluates and translates these innovations in lifestyle and integrated health practices into new settings and populations.
  2. Health and Wellness Coach Training
    • Establish standards in comprehensive lifestyle and integrated health care approaches, and train individuals with qualifications to focus full-time on prevention, creating health and healing and enhancing productivity and flourishing.
    • Facilitate any qualified and licensed health care practitioner or educator to gain specialist certification in prevention, health and wellness delivery, or attain sub-specialist status for integrated health care delivery in specific settings and populations, for example, schools, worksites, the military, health care settings, and long-term care facilities.
    • Create a Health Corps to provide an army of young and older people that would learn and model wellness behavior and support delivery of wellness education and training by the coaches.
  3. Health and Wellness Information Technology Toolkit
    • Create an advanced information tracking and feedback system (an applied wellness technology toolkit) for delivery of personalized wellness education, customized to each person’s level of readiness and stage of life.
    • Interface this applied wellness toolkit with electronic health records, for use by the public and the health and wellness coaches, practitioners, educators, the Health Corps., and the medical and health delivery systems.
  4. Economic Incentives
    • Create economic incentives (through bundling, capitation and other methods) for individuals, communities and public and private sector institutions to create and deliver self-care training, wellness products and preventive health care practices.
    • Establish intellectual property protection policies that reward wellness innovations using the latest technologies with evidence-based and comparative cost-value determinations.