Purpose Statement

Public health systems have always served as the health care safety net for the general public, providing an array of health promotion, education, prevention, outreach, early detection and disease management services. The growth of public and private managed care plans has resulted in changes in focus for public health practices. Today and in the future, both public health and managed care face challenges that will require and enable cooperation and collaboration toward common health goals and objectives.

Concerned members of AzPHA established the Managed Care Section a few years ago to address common issues and challenges by gathering and disseminating information about managed care plan utilization of public health practices. The Section intends to identify and promote managed care organizations that achieve commendable outcomes through provision of public health practices and services.

Goals for 2010

The Section is committed to the common goals of ensuring easy access to treatment; promoting health through preventive screenings, health education and immunization; and upholding the ten essential public health services with special interest in these five:

1. Mobilize partnerships to identify and solve health problems
2. Develop policies and plans that support individual and statewide health efforts
3. Link people to needed personal health services and assure the provision of health care when otherwise unavailable
4. Evaluate effectiveness, accessibility, and quality of personal and population-based health service
5. Research for new insights and innovative solutions to health problems

Objectives

In collaboration with both managed care and public health systems, the Section’s goal is to improve the health status and quality of care for our residents through concerted effort, shared information and maximized resources to achieve the following objectives:

• Identify opportunities to incorporate public health prevention, education and disease management programs into managed care practice.
• Identify and promote successful managed care prevention, wellness and disease management programs that can be exported to other managed care plans, the general population and public health programs.
• Share knowledge about successful managed care plan utilization of sound public health practices at AZPHA meetings to promote strategies for more collaboration between the systems.
• Pursue development of pilot projects that involve public health and managed care system collaborative effort.
• Recruit membership and greater involvement of managed care system representatives in the AZPHA.
• Keep the AZPHA membership informed about managed care issues.
• Maintain focus on managed care issues in the development of the AZPHA agenda to address the state’s health needs.

In summary, the mission of the Managed Care Section of the Arizona Public Health Association is to promote and inform others about managed care programs that successfully adopt sound public health practices. As a result, we expect the quality of care and health status of our residents will improve.