100 Million Healthier Lives is an unprecedented collaboration of change agents across sectors who are pursuing an unprecedented result: Mission: 100 million people living healthier lives by 2020. Our vision is to fundamentally transform the way the world thinks and acts to improve health, well-being and equity to get to breakthrough results. Together, we are systematically creating a community of solutions to the most intractable challenges that stand in the way of achieving health, wellbeing and equity across the globe. Our theory of change follows:

Unprecedented collaboration + innovative improvement + systems change to remove barriers = 100 million people living healthier lives by 2020. 

Our 700+ members have signed on because we believe the time is right for a major leap forward in the creation of health, wellbeing and equity. The rising tide of chronic disease, an aging population, structural inequity in health outcomes (despite advances in health care), and technology demand a fundamentally different approach, one which brings us together across sectors to address the physical, social and behavioral contributors to health together.

What’s more, all members of 100 Million Healthier Lives agree to adopt five following core principles in our work together. Several of those resonate strongly with the founding principles of CFHA of collaboration and family-centered care:

1. Partner deeply and respectfully in the process of creating change with people, organizations, and communities.
2. Promote equity, justice, strength, and wholeness in the process of creating health.
3. Adopt a humble posture of learning and improvement that acknowledges the importance of both stories metrics that matter.
4. Intentionally work to remove barriers in critical areas (e.g., payment reform, spread of good ideas) through intentional collaboration with traditional and nontraditional partners.
5. Make the way we work an example of what’s possible.

We set an audacious goal of 100 million healthier lives precisely so that there was a goal so big that no one organization or community or stream of work could achieve it alone.

A key priority in the movement to is to shift culture and mindset to one of partnership, co-design, and wellbeing. Some examples:

·         Partnership means that, for example, we have shared leadership and decision making at every level of the initiative. We believe that everyone holds a unique and important piece of the puzzle in creating health. We are committed to seeing how those pieces fit in different combinations, letting go of the pieces we hold to combine them in innovative ways.

·         Co-design means that we are working with rather than for communities. We are working to create 1000 “communities of solution” around the world, believing that sustainable change for health, wellbeing, and equity, will come when communities, themselves are full partners in the work, when they set meaningful goals rather than having goals set for them. The 61 communities in the SCALE and Pathway to Pacesetter initiatives are working in multi-sector teams and using improvement science techniques to test and learn their way into their community’s health goals.

Wellbeing means that we define and measure health as broader than physical health to include physical, mental, social, and spiritual wellbeing. The importance of integrating mental health into primary care resonates deeply with our work and goals, including a stream of work aimed to “make mental health everybody’s job.”

We have organized work by focusing on the following “9 Whats and 9 Hows”:

9 Whats

9 Hows

Close equity gaps – this is “the “price of admission” in 100 Million Healthier LivesHelp veterans to thriveAddress and improve social determinants across the continuumImprove wellbeing of indigenous communitiesHelp all kids have a great start to lifeMake mental health everybody’s job and take a prevention approachEngage people in their own health (nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress, food security)Improve employee health and wellbeingCreate wellbeing in the elder years and end of life

Shift culture and mindset to one of partnership, co-design, and wellbeing.Develop the health workforceElevate peer to peer approachesBuild improvement capability at the community levelUse chronic diseases and risk factors to build the health continuumImprove high quality primary health care access for allIntegrate data across siloes (health care, community, public health, social services)Create new financing strategiesTransform health care to be great at health and great at care

The movement is more than words and ideas, it is coming to life around the world in everyday action. The story below is from the online community—anyone is free to join the community and share stories about a recent success partnering with high school youth in Algoma, Wisconsin, shared by Teal Vanlanen:

Through the recognition of our Live Algoma work, our local high school received a $5000.00 Hands-Only CPR kit from the American Heart Association and Bellin Health.  The students were tasked with “being creative” in using this kits – I think they went above and beyond creativity! The students decided to partner with Live Algoma because “Live Algoma is by us and for us,” they said.  As a result, we presented our Driver Diagram, our AIM, and how to complete a PDSA [improvement science tools]. The students were thrilled.  We told them to start small and SCALE up in the community. For their first small scale test, the students wanted to train Hands Only CPR to members of our community at two local basketball games (basketball is a huge draw in our community). They were aiming for to train a minimum of 20 people per game; they trained 130!  How are they planning on SCALING up in our community?  Wait until you hear this: next semester they are developing a class where they can go out to local businesses and train all of the employees on Hands Only CPR.  Then, they will meet with the local government, school administrators, and local business owners to share their data and convince them to make system and policy changes within their organizations to require all employees and students (grades 7-12) to be trained in Hands Only CPR each year.

Thank you for the opportunity to share our voices on your blog. We invite you to join with us via www.100mlives.org; you can join the movement, register for monthly momentum calls, visit our map of the movement, and share your stories. Thank you for all you do to improve health and wellbeing! 

We invite you to join the 100 Million Healthier Lives Community at our spring gathering in Orlando, Florida, from March 19-22 in conjunction with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s (IHI) 17th Annual Summit on Improving Patient Care in the Office Practice and the Community. IHI is honored to announce that Vice Admiral (VADM) Vivek H. Murthy, MD, MBA, the 19th Surgeon General of the United States, will deliver the closing keynote address. For more information, click here.