VCU professor featured as a leader in new public health policy and practice book

By Alan Tanner
VCU Communications and Public Relations

Preventive medical procedures can sometimes result in misleading test results and needless anxiety for the patient, and the costs they generate are a problem with soaring health care expenditures. These procedures, which make up a substantial amount of all medical services offered in the United States, are continually under scrutiny by public health experts to determine their necessity and validity.

Steven H. Woolf, M.D., M.P.H, professor in the department of family medicine at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, began examining evidence for the effectiveness and necessity of preventive services by helping to launch the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) two decades ago.

Through his work at the independent panel established by the federal government in 1984 to offer evidence-based recommendations on preventive medical services, Woolf has been highly influential in helping to set the standard for preventive service guidelines in this country. Those standards include ensuring the implementation of preventive services by physicians to ensuring insurance coverage by offering evidence of effectiveness and necessity.

Now, Woolf and his colleague, J. Michael McGinnis, M.D., cofounder of the task force, are featured in the book, “Moments in Leadership: Case Studies in Public Health Policy and Practice.”

The book examines the importance of policy leadership in promoting the health and safety of populations and discusses Woolf’s work in determining the effectiveness of patient-based preventive services. He defines preventive services as immunizations, early detection and changing health behaviors.

These preventive measures help thwart the spread and progression of disease and attempt to curb unhealthy behaviors that are known to increase susceptibility to disease.

“Our health care system focuses the bulk of its resources on treating diseases at their later stages, rather than doing more to prevent them from occurring in the first place,” said Woolf.

“The logic behind this is as old as Benjamin Franklin’s adage ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,’” he added.

The book was sponsored by Pfizer Inc., in conjunction with its Public Health and Government group.