Minnesota Institute of Public Health

One could argue, IS there a topic that has NOT found its way into the health care reform national discussion? That said, in our 38 year history of work in substance abuse prevention, MIPH staff and our partners have noted with interest how infrequently substance abuse prevention has been part of the dialog. Part of that is on us to pursue - and on behalf of MIPH I recently wrote this commentary in the January 2010 issue of Minnesota Medicine magazine.

You often hear about the savings to be realized from good prevention and whether keeping people healthier, living longer and better actually ends up taxing the services needed to keep us all afloat. A strong logical response to that is to consider value versus savings. 

I go to the grocery store -- coupons and list in hand -- not with the single objective to save money, but to get value for my money. If I wanted to just save money I wouldn't go shopping. But since I do and feel I need to, the more important goal is to obtain value for my investment. That just makes sense because it helps improve my quality of life. And, by taking better care of myself I increase my capacity to contribute to life in general.

To those who say if we do prevention well with proper investment in it, and that causes us to work ourselves out of a job, I say, bring it on. There's always plenty of good work to do in improving the human condition. 

- JJ