Home  About  In the News  Publications  Blog  Join  Donate  The Roosevelt Institution's Policy Expo 2006, a summit of vision and ideas, in Washington D.C. Photo by Nick Bradley. Announcements National Expo: July 11th Hyde Park Summit: August 14-17 Essay Winners Announced in The Nation On Campus Iowa Chapter Holds Forum Zach Hindin in the GW Hatchet Coverage of the Johns Hopkins Chapter Launch > More "If a man does not have an ideal and try to live up to it, then he becomes a mean, base and sordid creature, no matter how successful." — Teddy Roosevelt    Good Health For All > Roosevelt Home > Roosevelt Challenges > Good Health For All By Kai H Stinchcombe Categories: Public health The Challenge: guarantee good health to every American. Important Progressive: accomplishing this challenge will contribute directly and specifically to the progressive values embodied by Roosevelt's Statement of Principles Meaningful: our contribution to this challenge will produce a real change in the lives of our fellow human beings. One can imagine a world in which the challenge is solved, and such a world is better than the one we live in today. Relevant: the challenge is relevant to the social contract project that Roosevelt has embarked upon Good health, as noted in Roosevelt's statement of principles, is essential to other life functions. In America, though we spend more of our GDP on healthcare than any other country, we have worse public health outcomes than many other first-world countries. Besides a healthcare system that is a pain in the neck to navigate, health issues are class issues in our unequal healthcare system. We could drastically improve healthcare outcomes at the same time as making our healthcare system more equitable by taking easy policy steps. Innovative We're looking for policy challenges where innovation is needed: where there isn't already a clear solution or best practices, but solutions can be developed creatively. Our goal is to develop options, not to lobby or advocate for a solution that is already known or to debate among several yes or no outcomes or pre-defined policy choices. Other organizations do the important work of debating and lobbying, that's just not our place in the process. Typically if you're looking at a standard policy debate you can apply what's known as the "Roosevelt Reframe" to develop new strategies to advance shared values. So rather than "should we engage in race-based affirmative action in college admissions" to which the potential answers are "yes" and "no", you can ask "how do we make our colleges more diverse", a goal we hope is shared by those on both sides of that debate. Healthcare is becoming a dominant issue in the 2008 elections and we would be silly to count ourselves out of that debate. Within the working families challenge about one in three papers was about health care, demonstrating that there is indeed interest in this topic. By approching the issue from the perspective of health rather than healthcare, we can open up an innovative new policy space that others are not active in. The nutrition and exercise practices in our public schools have as much to do with health in America as do prescription drug prices, and working on that aspect has the potential to save lots of money that will be freed up for other things. Feasible Approachable: given the level of research and discourse already available and given who else is working on the issue, college students with a range of experience levels and with varied types of expertise can contribute meaningfully to the debate and are likely to think of good ideas. We don't want something so technical only engineering majors can contribute to it, or something that is already dominated by another think tank or advocacy organization. Practical: the challenge is stated as a specific, measurable, and achievable goal, incremental progress toward which could be made by chipping away at the problem at various levels of government. The statement is not too broad or too narrow. One good way to make sure something is a good policy challenge rather than a debate or advocacy problem is to think of what sorts of innovative ideas might be produced for the 25 ideas publication series on that topic. Potential avenues for policy research include Traditional healthcare policy Designing and implementing universal healthcare Appropriate regulations for HMOs and insurance companies Insuring the uninsurable Improving America's mental health infrastructure Homelessness, schizophrenia, and the costs of untreated mental health issues "Healthiness" policy Nutrition in public schools Fat tax and other anti junk-food measures Building exercise friendly public spaces Preventative medicine standards, incentives, and bonuses Immunization policies Building an America that walks to work Reducing healthcare costs NIH and NSF joint ownership of patents with companies and researchers Controlling healthcare advertising spending Catastrophic care, mandates, and insurance prices Controlling end of life care costs Comments Laurel E Murphy, Sun 8 Jul 3:33 pm PST: This is an excellent proposal! It relates to a wide variety of current projects in our chapters and it has so many possibilities Kyle Atwell, Sun 8 Jul 10:15 pm PST: I wrote the same comment for James Coan's domestic and international health proposal: Great area to focus on, but I also know that for this year's "Working Families" we got a few health policy pieces. We may want to consider using this new year to explore completely new fields. At the same time, many of the Dem candidates have already stated health policy is one of their top priorities if they take the White House, so it may be a prime time for us to start focusing on policy proposals that are ready to deliver when health policy takes front stage in '08. Also, it is clear from the number of submissions that there is a lot of interest in health policy among RI members. Robert A Nelb, Sun 8 Jul 10:30 pm PST: A health care challenge certainly has a lot of potential for Roosevelt in the coming year. I know from working on the Working Families Publication that we had a lot of great health-related pieces that had to be turned away so that we could have enough balance with other, non-health policies. Fixing our health care system is a real challenge, but I think that what Roosevelt's looking for!   The Roosevelt Institution is a nonpartisan, nonprofit national think tank devoted to bringing students' policy ideas to the policy process. The opinions expressed on this site are exclusively those of its members. DC Headquarters: Roosevelt Institution / 2100 M St NW Suite 610 / Washington, DC 20037 || (202) 833-1359