Mt. Hood, Oregon’s highest peak — a volcano that hopefully will not erupt before Oregon upgrades its public health system.
”The bill…will ask for $500,000 for the Oregon Health Authority to devise a 10-year plan for each county to improve its services ‘so that every Oregonian has access to modern public health,’ Greenlick said.”
This recalls the sort of community/population health projects that Cambridge Management Group has been working on in Oregon for the past several months.
”The legislation is based on findings by a 15-member task force… to study the regionalization and consolidation of public health services. The task force concluded last September that the state needs new laws to establish ‘foundational capabilities’ as the minimum requirements for public health…,” Lund reported.
”The report defined those ‘foundational capabilities’ as assessment and epidemiology, emergency preparedness and response, communications, policy and planning, leadership and organizational competencies, health equity and cultural responsiveness, and community partnership development.”
In other words, it recognizes that there’s a lot more to community health than just medicine.