Introduction Every day, people make choices that impact their health. Those choices have been the focus of health professionals for years. Generations of time, energy, and resources have been dedicated to informing and influencing these choices through education, social marketing, and scores of other methods. As a result, our public discourse around health has been framed as a personal responsibility where good health is seen as a personal success, ill health a personal failing. Without question, there is much that we can do as individuals to improve our health such as increasing physical activity and eating healthier meals. Currently, only 23 percent adults engage in the minimum amount of recommended leisure-time physical activity (HHS, 2018) and only one in ten meet federal guidelines for fruit and vegetable consumption (CDC, 2017). We now know that linking a person’s health outcomes to their individual choices alone tells an incomplete story. Those choices exist within a system of contextual factors that together have a far greater influence on health than their individual behaviors. Collectively, these factors are referred to as the social determinants of health . When an individual or community is negatively impacted by the social determinants of health, they are said to be experiencing health inequities. Among the groups experiencing the greatest inequities are people of color and those who live in rural areas. While we must all accept personal responsibility for doing what we can to maintain and improve our own health, we as a nation must act now to eliminate the unfair and unjust policies and practices that prevent all of us being as healthy as we can be. In this context, the need for a refreshed framework to guide Cooperative Extension’s health- related work has never been greater. This document is designed to serve as that framework. Methods In 2012, the Extension Committee on Organization and Policy ECOP appointed a National Task Force on Health to identify systemwide priorities for guiding Cooperative Extension’s work in the area of health for the next three to five years. Approved by ECOP in 2014, Cooperative Extension’s National Framework for Health and Wellness, was instrumental in establishing work in the area of health as a priority for the Cooperative Extension System. It also served to raise the visibility of Cooperative Extension’s health-related work and catalyzed the establishment of new programs, partnerships, and professional development opportunities for staff. Recognizing the need for updated guidance for its work in this area, ECOP appointed a Health Innovation Task Force in 2020 to provide recommendations for system level change that would further advance Cooperative Extension’s work in the area of heath. Those recommendations are included in this document. The updated Framework uses “well-being” rather than “wellness” to align with terminology being used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Healthy People 2030. For example, Healthy People 2030 has chosen to use “well-being” in association with “health” to reflect an individual’s “ability to meet personal and collective needs under changing conditions in society.” Well-being also aligns more closely with the construct of health-related quality of life (CDC, 2018).
3
Powered by FlippingBook