5) Description of health product/service offering: Public health is my primary context. All people are beneficiaries of sound public health and wellness practices. Returning wellness to individual and community reponsibility rather than to the predominantly "industrialized" focus that dominates healthcare.

6) Description of innovation: Bottoms up approach to community health rather than top down stressing simplicity rather than complexity. Public health and prevention focus rather than allopathic critical responses to expressed disease symptoms resulting from failure to address known risk factors.

7) Operational model: Training wellness champions in local communities by inviting individuals who are community role models to participate. Champions are incentivized to discover and learn best practices using a model similar to Elderhostel. Planting these seeds of wellness in communities then spreads knowledge from the bottom up rather than the "protected knowledge" model of medicine.

8) Human resources: In development phase. Team consists of one public health specalist, one retired physician and volunteers.

9) Key operational partnerships: volunteer organizations, senior centers and community organizations such as libraries, fraternal organizations and clubs. Health insurance companies have expressed interest and partial pilot funding received from one. Partnerships with existing community organizations is fundamental to success as we will not be creating a new layer of services. Rather encouraging communities to take charge of the health and wellness of their members.

10) Financial Sustainability

          • Fees charged to clients?: No

          • Earned incomes as a percentage of operating costs: 0

          • Other funding sources: Grant funded at present.

          • Strategy for long-term sustainability: Sustainability based on savings in chronic care management and other medical/dental/mental health critical interventions as communities achieve higher levels of wellness among population due to self management and awareness of risks.

11) Current and Future Impact

          • Total number of clients: 1000

          • Clients in the past year: 350

          • Percentage of low-income clients: 40%

          • Impact: Too early to tell

          • Overall "market": Returning responsibility for health to communities and enhancing public health practices at the community level will have world wide benefits.

12) Scaling up strategy

          • Stage of the initiative: Start Up stage.

          • Expansion plan: Pilot testing in rural communities in northeastern US. Possible pilot testing in third world countries through partnership with local college using college interns.

13) Policy change: health insurance to pay for wellness and prevention programming

14) Origin of the initiative: Initiative started through work in elementary schools through work of Mr. Fenton. Background in public health.

Contact Information:
Chuck  Fenton
Executive Director
Reinventing Health
(non-profit)
1 Railroad Plaza
United States
Tel: 802 674-2900
Email: info@reinventing.org
Website: reinventing.org