FAMILY RE-UNION 7:
FAMILIES AND HEALTH
June 22-23, 1998

This conference convened leaders in family centered care, mental health, public health, managed care as well as family members and physicians involved in the care of chronically ill children. Sessions reviewed the research and practice showing that family involvement in health-care decision making, including prevention, reduces mortality, reduces health costs and improves patient outcomes. Roundtable topics included: strategies to improve the training of health care professionals; hospital and protocol design; dissemination of information; the impact of managed care and public health policy; and the support needed for whole families of chronically ill dependents. The predominant theme was the importance of treating family members as full partners in health care. Results so far include:

• A Presidential Memorandum directing the Departments of the Treasury, Agriculture, Interior, Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Education and the Social Security Administration to implement over 150 initiatives designed to enroll eligible but uninsured children in the Children's Health Insurance Program and Medicaid.
• Building on this effort to insure eligible but uninsured children, the administration launched "Insure Kids Now" with the toll free number 1-877-KIDS-NOW and a public/private educational campaign.
• Vice President Gore announced new Medicare coverage of tests and education for diabetes and osteoporosis.
• Vice President Gore announced the creation of a nation-wide public/private Medicare alliance of over 80 national organizations to help families understand the new options, preventive benefits, and consumer protections
• The Health Care Financing Administration announced a new Internet site www.medicare.gov including an interactive database on health plan options.
• Major foundations including Robert Wood Johnson, Annie E. Casey, and Nathan Cummings are discussing the need to address the intersection of family, health and community programming and philanthropy.
• The federal Center for Mental Health Services and the National Cancer Institute co-sponsored a historic meeting to formally acknowledge the mental health impact of a parent's physical or mental illness on a child.
• President Clinton proposed new measures to help Americans care for family members with long term care needs, including long-term care tax credits, a family caregiver support program, a new national network to help states create one-stop shops so caregivers can better access community resources, and a proposal that the federal government use its market leverage to set an example by offering private long-term care insurance to federal employees.
• As they committed at Family Re-Union 7, the Department of Defense has established Healthcare Consumer Consortia at its 588military treatment facilities, posted quality report cards in the lobbies of its hospitals and is expanding its Put Prevention into Practice Program into the Military Health System.
• Vice President Gore announced an effort, now called "BOOST 4 Kids", with the National Partnership for Reinventing Government and pilot communities to build on San Diego County's flexible, interagency, results-focused health care strategies and "outcome measures" of success.
• The design and planning process for Vanderbilt University's new Children's Hospital was strongly influenced by the conference and planned to be one of the nation's most family-centered facilities. Vanderbilt hosted the first national conference on Family Resource Centers in pediatric health care settings in March 1999.
• The Institute for Family Centered Care helped the federal Office of Personnel Management redesign a 1999 survey for 9 million federal employees, so dozens of health plans can assess how the federal employees' and retirees' health benefits program is family-centered.