CBB NEWS

President Clinton Hosts Second Annual Health Matters: Activating Wellness in Every Generation Conference

Clinton Health Matters Initiative announces 31 pledges with total investments in disease prevention reaching over $100 million, impacting more than 25 million people across the United States

La Quinta, CA—Today, President Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation hosted the second annual Health Matters: Activating Wellness in Every Generation Conference at the La Quinta Resort & Club. The event brought together more than 400 stakeholders from the worlds of health care, public policy, business, education, individual wellness, and sports to identify strategies to promote and improve individual healthy lifestyles in the home, the community, and the workplace.

The Health Matters Conference highlighted some of the 31 pledges with total investments in disease prevention reaching over $100 million, which will impact more than 25 million people across the United States.

Throughout the conference, panels focused on key issues including access to healthy lifestyles, healthy communities, and mental health and addiction. Conference participants included President Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, Commissioner Ray Kelly, Jillian Michaels, Senator Christopher Murphy, and Barbra Streisand.

“I am grateful to all of this year’s participants in the Health Matters Conference, especially those who made pledges to improve health and wellness throughout the United States. These pledges of more than $100 million will impact more than 25 million people,” said President Clinton. “I look forward to their implementation.”

Pledges announced today include:

The Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center at Cedars-Sinai pledged to create a campaign for awareness, advocacy, prevention, and change. This expands on the Barbra Streisand Women's Heart Center's leading expertise in women's heart disease treatment research to emphasize and empower women with the information they need to advocate for their own heart health.

BD & Direct Relief International’s Pledge will foster innovative approaches to reduce health disparities in two ways: first, the Pledge will address immediate resource needs related to diabetes through the deployment of medical supplies, and second, the Pledge will contribute towards sustainable change by developing a knowledge-base for future solutions.

The City of Coachella’s Pledge begins with incorporating a Health Element into its General Plan, which will act as the blueprint to plan and implement community wellness capital and programmatic activities needed to support residents’ and city workers' health, well-being, and equity. The Health Element is expected to be adopted by June 2013, and programmatic and capital projects will commence subsequently thereafter for a period of twenty years.

Gary Mendell pledges to create the first national entity devoted to providing a coordinated and comprehensive response to the disease of addiction.

GE pledges to develop a GE-hosted employer summit or similar event to challenge other Fortune 500 corporations to make a commitment to the health of their employees and the communities in which they work. GE will convene national learning laboratories for similar efforts across the country to showcase, replicate, and implement lessons learned in community healthcare transformation efforts.

HumanaVitality® provides 1.6 million people with reputable tools, resources and incentives designed to help them make healthier choices. HumanaVitality pledges to bring the same techniques and education to nearly 812,000 Humana beneficiaries nationwide as of January 1, 2013. The idea: lay out a customized, supported path to better health; and reward them for the healthier decisions like physical activity or healthier food choices.

Tenet Healthcare Corporation pledges to advance CHMI’s goals over the next year by encouraging healthy eating habits for their employees, patients and those who visit our hospitals. Their efforts will include developing comprehensive healthy eating vision statements and action plans for our hospitals; and working with their contracted food services vendors to achieve measurable progress in increasing their offerings of fruit and nutritionally-dense, minimally processed foods and reducing consumption of high-calorie snacks and beverages.

Verizon pledges to partner with the Clinton Health Matters Initiative to drive a co-branded public awareness and engagement strategy through the Health Matters initiative to support the Verizon/NBCU Healthy mPact campaign; evaluate the technology needs of healthcare facilities and related organizations within the communities identified by Health Matters for coordinated support and to contribute to community health IT makeovers; help identify relevant Verizon healthcare efforts and resources from wireless and enterprise business units, Verizon Foundation, retail outlets, and human resources and drive these efforts into the Health Matters initiative that support the program in meaningful ways; and provide the technology infrastructure to support the Health Matters initiative web portal that may include network connectivity, cloud storage, and application development.

To view more pledges, please visit www.clintonfoundation.org.

Based on the success of last year’s conference, the Clinton Foundation launched its newest initiative, the Clinton Health Matters Initiative (CHMI), in November 2012. CHMI is a national initiative building on the Clinton Foundation’s work on global health and childhood obesity that will work to improve the health and well-being of people across the United States by developing and implementing a variety of evidence-based individual, systems, and investment strategies. CHMI is supported by its partners GE, Tenet Healthcare Corporation, the conference’s presenting sponsor, and Verizon. Each partner will leverage their unique expertise to promote healthy lifestyles across generations. By working directly with individuals, communities, corporations, and national organizations to help them take action to contribute to the health of others, CHMI will advance community health by closing gaps in health disparities and focusing efforts in underserved areas. CHMI will also activate individuals to lead healthier lives by providing an online platform to connect people with local, scalable solutions led by healthy change agents. Since its launch in November 2012, CHMI has generated 25 pledges from corporations, non-governmental organizations, and individuals that will lead to more than a $50 million investment in health and wellness and impact more than 17 million people.

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