Preventive Medicine 2020 Online brought together leaders from medicine and public health to examine the most pressing issues in healthcare today, and how the Nation’s healthcare system can be transformed around prevention. This virtual meeting offered high-quality medical education programming, networking opportunities, and the recognition of the best in the profession.

The meeting was organized around critical topics including innovations in community health, public health policy, evidence and practice, health systems transformation and lifestyle medicine. Each meeting day was themed around two critical topics, with distinct sessions addressing shared themes in the practice of prevention.

 

Preventive Medicine 2020 Online focused on big, bold, upstream ideas and the people, places, and programs that are making them a reality today. Transformation is only possible with a clear vision, audacious goals, an innovative mindset, and the will to implement new policy and practice, honestly evaluate change, and engage stakeholders at every level.

 

In recent years, declines in cardiovascular mortality have stalled and some cardiovascular conditions, such as stroke and heart failure, are showing increasing death rates. The decrements have been worst for persons living in rural counties in the US, where both overall and cardiovascular mortality are rising. A recently published American Heart Association Presidential Advisory entitled, “Call to Action: Rural Health,” urges the AHA and other stakeholders to make rural health a priority. In this session, two co-authors of the paper summarize existing data on rural populations, communities, and health outcomes; explore individual, social, and health delivery system factors underlying urban-rural disparities in health outcomes; propose a set of solutions spanning health system innovation, policy, and research; and invite participants to articulate preventive medicine’s role.

Upon completion of both of these activities, you should have the skills needed to:

• • Enhance your current practice of preventive medicine through adoption of recent innovative practices in Community Health
    
    
  • Recognize how future Preventive Medicine practitioners will be trained and the skills they will need to impact patient outcomes
    
    
  • Adapt your preventive medicine practice as a part of overall Health Systems transformation including the redesign of primary care and the increased focus on social determinants of health
    
    
  • Gain competence in Lifestyle Medicine practice through expanded education efforts that target both public health and specialty practitioners
    
    
  • Analyze how two innovative approaches to Public Health and Population Health, social determinants of health and value-based care, will increase the effectiveness of preventive medicine practice in the future  
    
    
  • Engage in the ongoing efforts to improve Public Health Policy, Evidence, and Practice through improvements in data collection and evidence-based outcomes measures

Dr. Joseph Iser, MD, DrPH, MSc, FACPM 

Dr. Wendy Braund, MD, MPH, MSEd, FACPM

Dr. Eduardo Sanchez, MD, MPH, FAAFP