December 17, 2009
Dean Shortell co-chairs international conference on health policy in Jerusalem
At the Fourth International Jerusalem Conference on Health Policy, more than 600 participants from many countries addressed ways to improve health care systems world wide. The three-day December conference, sponsored by the he Israel National Institute for Health Policy Research, was co-chaired by Dean Stephen Shortell, UC Berkeley School of Public Health, and Dr. Avi Israeli, head of Health Policy and Management at The Hebrew University Hadassah Medical School and former director-general of the Israel Ministry of Health.
The conference theme, "Improving health and healthcare: Who is responsible? Who is accountable?" centered around four main issues: 1) public accountability/governance and stewardship; 2) social support; 3) personal responsibility; and 4) performance management.
Dean Shortell delivered a keynote address that provided a framework for improving the care model for the treatment of chronic disease—which accounts for 60 percent of all deaths worldwide, with 80 percent of those occurring in low- and middle-income countries. He highlighted the importance of financial incentives and the need to build capacity and implement performance measurement in order to improve transparency and accountability. Shortell also advanced the concept of a "population health management system," emphasizing the importance of investments in education, transportation, housing, family support services, and other sectors in addition to investments in health care delivery.
U.S. schools of public health were well represented at the conference—participants included Larry Brown from Columbia University, Richard Saltman from Emory University, and Sara Singer and Dan Winkler from Harvard University. From UC Berkeley, Professor Richard Scheffler spoke about ADHD and the responsibilities of the government, health care providers, and patients and their families.