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Jody W. Zylke, MD; Catherine D. DeAngelis, MD, MPH

JAMA. 2008;300(17):2062.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Health care is a vitally important issue for all nations. However, despite health care spending in the United States rising 6.7% in 2006, exceeding $2 trillion or 16% of the gross domestic product,¹ there are still 47 million Americans without health insurance and globally the United States ranks 42nd in life expectancy, down from 11th 2 decades ago.² So what can be done? One possible way to mitigate the problem is to alter priorities from treatment of disease to prevention and start in early childhood.

In a recent commentary, Woolf seemed almost prescient when he said, "turmoil in health care and the economy may be shifting the dynamics for health promotion and disease prevention."³ According to Woolf, the potential benefits of disease prevention are profound in modifying prevalence and severity of disease and costs, yet only 1% to 3% of US . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Author Affiliations: Dr Zylke (jody.zylke@jama-archives.org) is Contributing Editor and Dr DeAngelis is Editor in Chief, JAMA.

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