Population Health Forum Aug 6, 2002 Minutes

[Stephen Bezruchka]

Present:  Tom Martin, SB, Julie Beschta, Susan Brower, David
Messerschmidt, Patra Leaming

Tom presented the report for his degree, (SEEDING THE GRASSOOTS:
CULTIVATING IDEAS TO REDUCE ECONOMIC INEQUALITY) focusing on the
recommendations. What seems notable to him is that the Pophealth Forum has
met regularly for several years, and brought attention to the links
between economic inequality and health through sponsoring meetings and
distinguished speakers.

-   These included cultivating memes, choosing an audience, and
considering policy options.  He used a two by two table for considering
policies  those with low chance and high chance, and potential
effectiveness of the policy in reducing economic inequality, namely low
and high effectiveness.

-  meme testing (memes are ideas that have evolved into a form that
induces people to repeat them and pass them on, an infecitous slogan,
hingle, melody or idea) would have to be done by focus groups or other
qualitative methods and this might be something graduate students might
want to do

-  he considers economic inequality the basic or underlying idea, and
health benefits could be touted, although for a public health audience,
population health might be the underlying idea, although to date this has
not been very successfully propagated

 Tom was quite interested in the idea of a pledge campaign to involve
potential participants without demanding a commitment of time and
resources.  The idea is to get organizations to pledge a statement on
economic equality and use this as a vehicle for getting them involved and
a lead for having conversations about this idea.
-  there is a sample pledge on page 45-6 of his report
-  Tom talked about Grameen Bank Groups making pledges and how this was
helpful
-  he is willing to try and seek funding to support him in this work

we considered a variety of organizations who might do such a pledge:
-  International Health Program at UW
-  Dept of Health Services
-  School of Public Health and Community Medicine
-  Youth Groups
-  Service providers
-  Washington Association of Churches and faith communities
-  Community Alliance for Global Justice (CAGJ)
-  Economic Opportunity Institute


Those who would like a copy of the report can contact Julie Beschta
(jbeschta at u.washington.edu)

Other ways of spreading the word included working with various family
support movements, having brown bag lunches and talking about these ideas

Bezruchka and Julie Beschta will spend the last week of October at Summit,
a Seattle public school, in their social justice class, seeing what can be
done with grades 7 and up an hour a day, talking about health and
hierarchy

There will be a symposium on "Is out society making you sick" at Swedish
Hospital October 23, and a poster is being prepared for that event, we
considered involving the social work school to try the poster with clients
to give them a larger context of the issues.

emailed comments from UW nursing students in a response to a hierarchy and
health lecture in May by Bezruchka were circulated, as well as a series of
points from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's National Dialogue on
Health's Phase I findings.  Bezruchka had participated in a discussion of
possible directions the foundation could take to promote health.
Discussions were held in a number of other settings.

Our next goals seem to be continuing to spread the word, using pledges as
a mechanism, and whatever means each of us feels comfortable with.

The next meeting was scheduled for 6 pm Sept 18 in H 670 after Tom gets
back from India

IF YOU WISH TO BE REMOVED FROM THIS LIST, PLEASE REPLY TO ME.

Stephen