The best way to curb the cost of treating disease is to keep people from getting sick in the first place. Yet increased rates of obesity in all demographic subgroups have contributed to an increased burden of costly diseases like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension and cancer throughout the entire health system. At the same time, the enormous progress since the 1960s in reducing tobacco use has plateaued, leaving the United States with 42.1 million adult smokers and a 15.7% smoking rate among high schoolers—a trend that is increasingly driven by highly marketed alternatives to cigarettes such as small cigars.
Obesity-related and tobacco-related illnesses impose $190 billion and $170 billion, respectively, in costs on our already strapped health care system. Fortunately, these costs and those attributable to a range of other health challenges are largely preventable. NCHC supports the following prevention strategies:
Expand Support for Evidence-Based Prevention
- Support comprehensive tobacco control policies
- Expand access to Diabetes Prevention Program
- Ensure adequate funding for prevention activities of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Prevention and Public Health Fund
Invest in the Health of the Next Generation
- Keep children’s health coverage affordable through extension of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)
Resources
Joint Letter: Trust for America’s Health, Vision for a Healthier America (October 2016)
Joint Letter of Support for CHIP (October 2016)
NCHC Comments on Proposed Physician Fee Schedule Rule (September 2016)
NCHC Forum – Bending the Health Care Cost Curve: the Role of Investments in Prevention (July 2015)
Joint Letter on the Prevention and Public Health Fund (March 2015)
NCHC Letter of Support for the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (March 2015)
Joint Letter on CHIP Reauthorization (February 2015)
Blog Post – CHIP: Investing in Children’s Health and Population Health (February 2015)
Joint Letter of Support for the Medicare Diabetes Prevention Act (April 2013)
Issue Brief – Understanding the Case for Taxing Sugar-Sweetened Beverages (February 2013)
NCHC Forum – Sugary Drinks: a Public Health Challenge (February 2013)