Health Promotion Initiative

There are significant challenges to carrying out community-based health promotion initiatives, including challenges to commitment, coordination, funding and sustainability.

These efforts run counter to many multimillion-dollar marketing campaigns for products and services that promote a sedentary, high-calorie lifestyle.

Nationally, health promotion faces the perennial challenge of being strongly supported but significantly underfunded in nearly all government, business, and health care settings. About 95 percent of the $1 trillion the United States spends on health each year is used for direct medical care, while only 5 percent is spent on health promotion activities. This occurs despite awareness that 40 percent of deaths are caused by potentially modifiable behaviors.

In Mayo Clinic, dozens of departments and programs focus on objectives in line with Action on Obesity.

A Mayo Clinic Health Promotion Initiative would coordinate the health promotion activities of different departments, centers and programs including primary care, preventive medicine, cardiology, Cardio Vision 2020, endocrinology, sports medicine, food services, the Dan Abraham Health Living Center and many other areas.

The Health Promotion Initiative would be a coordinating, integrating framework to facilitate interaction on clinical, educational and research activities - all working toward lower weight, decreased morbidity and a reduction in health care expenditures. This initiative could improve clinical care by developing new cost-effective programs, avoiding duplication and fostering outcomes-based research.

Initial planning is under way. Some health promotion activities or programs presently operating within Mayo Clinic are depicted in Figure 1.

Some health promotion activities or programs presently operating within Olmsted County are depicted in Figure 2.

Some health promotion activities or programs presently operating within the nation are depicted in Figure 3.