As part of his keynote presentation on Wednesday during day-one of the three-day 7th Bilateral Summit of the two Samoas, Bob Grunewald, an economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis pointed to recent data from the World Bank on Samoa regarding, tobacco and obesity.

However, he didn’t elaborate further as there were other presenters who were speaking on these specific issues during the summit, which ends this afternoon, at the Gov. H. Rex Lee Auditorium.

Grunewald did point out that “we recognize” that the non-communicable disease (NCDs) costs can be quite high and suggested “developing strategies to be able to reduce these costs.”

“For example, dialysis is expensive. If we can create a healthier population and be able to keep folks on their medication on a regular time frame, we could be saving our government budgets quite a bit of money,” he told participants which includes from non government agencies involved in health care and members of the public there to listen.

He went on to provide some points for participants to think about — such as “what are areas we can begin to improve overall health [care].”

“For early prevention, we can think of how we structure our parks, our sidewalk system to increase activities; increasing access to healthy food; having promotions for exercise and healthy diets; and reducing tobacco use — starting early with childhood nutrition and health, recognizing early that some of these documented diseases are quite expensive,” he said.

“We can think about where we can save money, once people do have diabetes and we can keep those costs controlled — from having to spend a lot of money,” he said and suggested strategies for participants to consider.

The “first is to identify where you have the highest costs in your health care system and then test some ideas and some approaches on where to reduce those costs. This requires data and measurement in order to demonstrate those costs savings,” he explained.

Another approach, he said, “Is to have data on your population, particularly around the risk profiles that you have on — let’s say a population that you might see coming down the pipeline that maybe exposed to diabetes and may become quite expensive to the health care system.”

“If you understand the data on your population, you can plan for, not only, interventions to be able to help turn that around, but also as we bring ideas to the table, we can start to see if we are making changes in those risk profiles,” he said.

According to the economist, there are two ways to look at this: one — risk in terms of costs to government and cost to the health care system, or measuring effectiveness of a health care program.

RECAPPED

At day-two yesterday of the summit, the Health Department pharmacist, Dr. Francine Amoa re-capped Wednesday’s presentations at the Summit. She said that from previous NCD meetings, “we’ve identified four important risk factors to focus on — smoking, nutrition, alcohol, [and] physical activity” and participants heard updates from both American Samoa and Samoa.

They heard from the American Samoa Community College’s Children Healthy Living Program, which Amoa said, “Fortunately we are moving towards the right direction by identifying the behaviors that we need to improve.”

There was also a presentation from Samoa on their efforts to advocate for policy at the national level both to deter individuals from the purchase of cigarettes, alcohol, and implementing policies to reinforce these among the school age population.

Another presentation was from the Package of Essential NCD (PEN) Fa’asamoa group and their ongoing effort to utilize cultural infrastructure to promote and empower healthy living, increase awareness and screening. “And above all, improve access to care,” said Amoa,

Summit participants also heard from the American Samoa Breast Cervical Cancer Early Detection program, which has been in place for more than 10 years, and mirrors PEN frame work in its increasing awareness and the idea of early detection.

In another presentation, which was through a representative from Samoa, “We look at ways to campaign healthy eating, better known as ‘eating the rainbow’ and utilizing social media to maximize this effort,” she said.

The final presentation talked about partnerships and the expansion of pharmacy services at American Samoa’s Community health centers, and the importance of supporting each other in the health care industry towards better management of NCDs.

Before Wednesday’s session ended, the audience heard a presentation from Papali’i Dr. Failautusi Avegalio, who heads the University of Hawaii Pacific Business Center Program, about ‘Pacific Regional Breadfruit Initiative’ (PRBI) project.

According to Amoa, the talk on the importance of the health and economic implications of the breadfruit sparked a lot of interest and conversation. (See separate story in today’s Samoa News on the latest development for producing gluten free breadfruit flour in the territory.