We look at the whole picture, the entire lived experience that influences health.
Our work examines health through many lenses that intersect, and it often helps people who are underserved or experiencing trauma — for example, veterans suffering from PTSD, children with serious illness, low-income residents grappling with systemic racism and neglect, and others.
One of our focus areas includes improving primary care. We embrace ways to measure wellness and thriving in communities and re-envisioning primary care to maximize its capacity to recognize and, to a greater extent, address the myriad factors that impact a person’s health.
Evaluating the State of Primary Care During Covid-19
Nova Institute Visioning Visionary Dr. Rebecca Etz’s work aims to grow and articulate the intellectual foundations and guiding principles for the next generation of primary care. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Rebecca’s work with the Larry A. Green Center is highlighting the fact that systemic neglect of primary care in the United States has left this critical national resource unstable and overwhelmed.
In response to the fact that no one organization, federal funder, or national dataset speaks to the on-the-ground realities of primary care practice, Rebecca and her team’s “Quick COVID-19 Primary Care Survey” is gathering data regularly from primary care practitioners across the country. National and state policy is now being informed about the strains on this system. Read about this work in a Washington Post article from May 14, 2020.
In Summer 2020, Rebecca and her team convened the seven largest primary care clinician organizations to discuss the situation of primary care and the need for a unified voice and vision. This was the first time these organizations had ever met together. The group worked through a theoretical discussion and posted a vision of a new paradigm for primary care, “Primary Care Speaks as One.” More than 2,000 individuals and 50 organizations have signed this call to action.
Rebecca was also a contributor to an important report released by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine: Implementing High Quality: Primary Care Report: Rebuilding the Foundation of Health Care on May 4, 2021. On May 21, 2021, the Larry A. Green Center sent a letter to the Secretary and Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services urging the implementation of one of the report’s highest recommendations, to create an HHS Secretary’s Council on Primary Care.
Stay tuned for more updates and publications about Rebecca’s important and groundbreaking work.
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Over the past thirty years, we’ve been part of a movement to shift the primary approach to health from one that focuses on disease to a more complete approach. We renamed the “Institute for Integrative Health” the Nova Institute for Health — of People, Places, and Planet because we are building on “person health” and looking at the context of peoples’ lives and communities as well as the health of the planet we all share.
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