Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Looks to Help “Navigate” Health Care Reform
Filed under: Health Policy Community, Health Reform, Medical Journals
photo by aulia.m via flickr
As we posted back in January, “California Foundations Advocate for Health Care Reform,” the L.A. Times had reported that Paul Brest, “president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in Menlo Park and author of a book on philanthropic strategies” stated that: “What I’ve seen is foundations moving from thinking all we needed to do is support good research in the field and the rest will happen to realizing that unless we are going to support organizations to take the research and try to turn it into policy, then the research is going to sit in the bottom of a pile somewhere.” With a noted caveat (”Advocacy is risky for foundations, since most are categorized by the IRS as 501(c) nonprofits, which restricts them from direct lobbying or participation in partisan politics.”), one welcomes the foundations and their massive intellectual and financial capital further into the fray. They hold the talent and ability of some of the best and brightest among us.
Having said that, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) has advanced the battle line one smart step forward. Whereas the lobbying spoken of above goes to delivery of the “message,” RWJF has undertaken to put the message in a more deliverable form.
There’s an interesting post on the subject over at the RWJF Health Reform Blog, The Users’ Guide to the Health Reform Galaxy. The post was written by Brian Quinn, Ph.D, a program officer in the RWJF Research and Evaluation Unit, and goes to the question of form regarding applied research, or “How to package the evidence for health reform.”
Mr. Quinn smartly points out that considering the abundance and complexity of journal articles and reports intent on health reform that each day brings, without some form of translation and synthesis geared to those who will actually make decisions about health reform, the “applied” portion of “applied research” may turn out to be nothing more than just an intent.
As a means of cultivating application, and assuring that worthwhile research doesn’t languish “at the bottom of the pile,” RWJF has initiated the Synthesis Project, “to produce user-friendly briefs and reports that synthesize research findings on perennial health policy questions.” The Project is timely and their work is well worth a look.
At the end of a post the other day, I noted some personal experience relating to the sensibility of providing cancer patients with “Navigators” to help them best understand and utilize the health care resources at hand. I finished the post by stating: “It is simply not reasonable to think that patients will do (or do well) that which they do not understand.” Substitute “policy makers” for “patients” and the statement still holds true.
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