Building the evidence on Making Health a Shared Value: Insights and considerations for research

May Lynn Tan; David Vlahov; Erin Hagan; M Maria Glymour; Laura M Gottlieb; Ellicott C Matthay; Nancy E Adler

doi:10.1016/j.ssmph.2019.100474

Building the evidence on Making Health a Shared Value: Insights and considerations for research

SSM Popul Health. 2019 Aug 22:9:100474. doi: 10.1016/j.ssmph.2019.100474. eCollection 2019 Dec.

Authors

May Lynn Tan¹, David Vlahov², Erin Hagan¹, M Maria Glymour^{1

3}, Laura M Gottlieb⁴, Ellicott C Matthay^{1

3}, Nancy E Adler¹

Affiliations

¹ Center for Health and Community at the University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA.
² Yale School of Nursing at Yale University, West Haven, CT, USA.
³ Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA.
⁴ Department of Family & Community Medicine, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA.

Abstract

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF)'s Culture of Health Action Framework guides a movement to improve health and advance health equity across the nation. Action Area One of the Framework, Making Health a Shared Value, highlights the role of individual and community factors in achieving a societal commitment to health and health equity, centered around three drivers: Mindset and Expectations, Sense of Community, and Civic Engagement. To stimulate research about how Action Area One and its drivers may impact health, Evidence for Action (E4A), a signature research funding program of RWJF, developed and released a national Call for Proposals (CFP). The process of formulating the CFP and reviewing proposals surfaced important challenges for research on creating and sustaining shared values to foster and maintain a Culture of Health. In this essay, we describe these considerations and provide examples from funded projects regarding how challenges can be addressed.

Keywords: Civic engagement; Culture of health; Health equity; Mindset and expectations; Sense of community; Shared values.