Listening and doing on health reform

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, President and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, writes about her reaction to President Obama’s speech on health care reform last night.

I find it difficult to inventory all of the thoughts and reactions I experienced while listening to President Obama’s speech on health care reform last night. 

How to describe my listening experience?  Most of all, it was about how one might feel when one of the most important conversations in the country is centered on issues that you care deeply about, issues that you’ve been working on for decades. Perhaps it’s the way that athletes feel when they qualify to compete in the Olympics: suddenly, all of the years of training and hard work are put on display, center stage. And even though some of the most elite athletes are jockeying for position and aiming for the gold medals, for many of the other athletes, it’s also thrilling to simply be there, in common cause for a common purpose.

Last night’s speech, and all of the events of 2009 that led up to it, tell me that this is our Olympics.  This is our moment, when organizations like RWJF—and we are one of many organizations dedicated to the causes of health and health care—are seeing the fruits of our work occupy center stage.  Like those athletes, we’ve been working at this for years and years—and by “this,” I mean, we haven’t been working on getting any one bill or plan on health care passed on Congress, but we most certainly have been working on helping Americans lead healthier lives and get the quality care they need.  Because it’s RWJF’s mission to do so.

As a philanthropic organization, it is absolutely not our role to tell our government leaders what they should do when it comes to passing a bill to reform health care.  However, the conversations on what this legislation should look like have swung mighty close to the circles in which we work.  Our grantees and partners have been living and breathing these issues for years, developing the research and demonstration projects that have helped document the extent of our health and health care woes and shine a light on potential solutions.  Now, what they’ve learned—about why we need to get more Americans covered, or how to deliver high-quality, high-value care—is helping inform this national discussion. 

Therefore, it would be disingenuous of any one of us at RWJF or among our partners, myself included, to say that we don’t have an important role to play in these great events and that we didn’t care deeply about what was said last night.  What if you’re a teacher who cares deeply about the work you do—would you be able to divorce your experiences and knowledge from a national discussion on education in America?  I don’t think so. 

So I’ll just come right out and say it:  I was greatly moved by last night’s speech—as I’ve been moved by so many things that have happened this past year.  Our country, as a whole, has been through great distress and turmoil—some very tough things have happened to compound the challenges many Americans were already facing in accessing better health care and understanding how to live healthier lives.  Last night’s speech reminded me of how badly we need this, this thing we call health reform.  

 

Comments

[A. Scott Holmes]

Miss Lavizzo-Mourey's comments are representative of too many non-profit leaders....she describes the problem, but not the solution. For example, nurses are a vital resource and if they had access to 3 proven IT systems, they would be more productive, less stressed out, and patient safety would be improved. She should point out that nurses have little to say when prioritizing systems solution, and a remedy would be for CEOS to gain more of nurses insight and perspective.

[Risa Lavizzo-Mourey]

A. Scott Holmes commented that nurses play a central role to high-quality health care and that we need to do more to highlight this role in implementing health reform. RWJF’s investments in the area of nurses and quality health care, as well as supporting nurse leadership initiatives, support our overall commitment to the issues you raise. See the Initiative on the Future of Nursing at http://www.rwjf.org/pr/product.jsp?id=44748 for additional information. Thank you for your comment.