We heard about numerous ways in which money itself would be valuable for both research and implementation. Funding could be used to increase access to everything from fresh produce to DPPs. It could be used to increase collaborations between academic institutions and communities and to fund more broadly the work of translating research from academia to real-world settings. Money even shapes the creation of new programs, as the promise of reimbursement makes the DPP model an appealing, and potentially limiting, basis for innovation. In addition, while prevention has powerful potential for long-term returns on investment, there are often major up-front costs. The time-frame for breaking even is often longer than an election cycle or the standard turnover time between insurance providers, meaning there is little incentive for those who control much of the funding to invest in prevention. However, while funding is valuable, money itself isn’t the key to prevention. We can’t simply “throw money at the problem.” The money needs to be used to determine how to best implement prevention measures and then to make these possibilities a reality. This means funding the entire process: research, design, planning, implementation, innovation, evaluation, improvement, scaling, replication, and everything in between.
