For health matters, unless it is part of our lifestyle, our work, in the news, or of particular importance to a specific individual or group that we follow, we do not pay it consistent attention. There always seem to be other priorities that compete with it, and at the end of the day, as important as we all admit health is, it does stay front and center for us - at least not until we or a loved one gets sick. Public health tries to make the case that waiting until that point (sickness) is not in our best approach. Using prevention as a way to reduce cost and improve the quality of life has not been uniformly promoted nor is it particularly valued in this country. Perhaps this is why it has proven difficult for prevention to gain any traction in an environment where the public is educated by media that thrives on short-term memory and catchy celebrity-driven headlines (yes, like the one for this blog posting). The ongoing soda-bashing induced by last week's NYC department of health policy proposal, and the association of a neglected tropical disease with HIV, are evidence of public health's occasional willingness to use any means to get onto the stage and into the spotlight. Smart marketing, or simply attention seeking behavior liable to yield distrust of future messages?
For the sake of prevention we need to see news outlets put more substance into public health coverage. It would be good to hear more about the people affected by the some of these studies and innovative practices. Stories about the individual do not define public health in the same way that stories about individual companies do not generally define corporate social responsibility, but they gives us a frame of reference. We want (and need) to know how lives have been changed by the interventions so we can use them as hooks on which to catch attention and place prevention. Just as we use small studies to highlight potentially significant health breakthroughs, we can use the experiences of a few people to highlight the potential for a community economic development project, an innovative after-school program, or an effective public : private partnership.
We cannot continue to wait for health crisis tipping points and policy debates to make the case for prevention, that would be oxymoronic. There is substantive, timely work going on in a variety of spaces by a myriad of innovative collaborators, all worthy of more coverage than it currently recieves. It may be my choice of influencers and media channels that has my feed lacking in the "public health impact story" department (I am open to suggestions). But, given the long lamented lack of such a department at any health or news agency I am aware of, I suspect we are still trailing issues of lesser import. Public health needs help "telling the story" on the same stage as major corporations. That way it can show up in my media feed without me having to dig as if I am prospecting for precious stones. For our health's sake, prevention is too important to have to go that deep to be found.
