ABSTRACT
Since the 1970s, reform-minded innovators in industry, the government, private health organizations, and philanthropic foundations have undertaken various ventures in preventive health-care efforts that fall between and sometimes overlap those of the holistic health movement at one extreme and the health-care industry at the other. The preventive health movement represents a regrouping of interests that have been part of American health care for generations. In 1993, many advocates of worksite prevention programs were dismayed to discover that the Clinton Health Insurance Reform Task Force ignored this area in its proposals for reform. Over a dozen philanthropic foundations targeted specific unsolved problems of the health-care system. In 1980, Matthew Myers, a public interest lawyer, was hired by the Federal Trade Commission to do an analysis of tobacco marketing's effects on public health. The Centers for Disease Control program's benefits-to-cost analysis highlighted the savings possible when chronic disease prevention, health promotion, and prevention-oriented clinical services are carried out effectively.
