The Institute for Alternative Futures new report “Public Health 2030: A Scenario Exploration” offers alternative scenarios for the future of public health and recommendations for agencies to control communicable diseases, promote health, and foster emergency preparedness and response.
Looking forward, Public Health Agencies (PHA) will see social media evolve as more and more people join “Groupnets” which consist of around ten people who will be able to interact with one another in real-time and with great intensity. These groups will proliferate as cities provide their own free wireless networks and as access to smart phones and data plans are subsidized.
PHAs will try to improve community health and personal health behavior through “peer uplift’ and through effective collaborations and interactions within Groupnets as people try to influence group behavior directly through real-time video and audio interactions.
It is thought that Groupnets will be much more influential in the future than social networks are today. Groupnets will eventually converge into a broad national network where communities will be able to exchange their innovations and best practices.
In years to come, research and evaluation will draw on the spread of EHRs to collect genomic, bio-monitoring, and socioeconomic data. PHAs will be able to identify groups and neighborhoods whose social, genetic, and environmental risks can be addressed through targeted prevention strategies. Healthcare providers will use analytics to direct their funding priorities to use for population health strategies.
By 2020, public health officials and researchers will use sophisticated real-time virtual simulations of individual neighborhoods and communities. Data will be available on reimbursements, real-time environmental and bio-monitoring data will be available, along with various forms of crowd-sourced data. It will be possible to analyze systems used in population-level analytics and research to do communicable disease surveillance and prevention, improve emergency preparedness, and provide efficient environmental monitoring.
For more information and to view the report, go to www.altfutues.org.