Sesuagno Mola of Ethiopia, married at five, never went to school and had her first child at 14. More children would have followed in quick succession, but Sesuagno got involved with a program in her town run by Girl Up developed by the UN Foundation that empowers young girls to create a life for themselves and their families well beyond poverty and illiteracy.

In Sesuagno’s case, she joined a program developed to help teach literacy, and provide information about family planning, gardening and life skills to help reduce food contamination.

Through the program, Sesuagno learned to build shelves to keep her family’s food off the floor, built a stove that sends the smoke out of the house instead of into her lungs—a cause of pneumonia and death for thousands of girls and women in the developing world—and jointly decided with her husband, because of her time in the program, that they would wait to have their next child.

“What we support are comprehensive services for adolescent services for girls to help improve access to health services, education and safe spaces,” says Andrea Austin, a spokesperson for the UN Foundation.

A new op-ed in the Minneapolis Star Tribune makes clear the connection between improving the economy and improving public health — especially when it comes to children. One can’t be accomplished without the other, according to authors Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, MD, MBA, the president and chief executive officer of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Arthur Rolnick, PhD, a senior fellow at the University of Minnesota and former senior vice president and director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

By improving early education for kids — and even for parents before birth — we can dramatically improve the chances that kids will grow up to lead longer, healthier and more financially successful lives. This will benefit them individually and all of us collectively. The obstacle standing before public health officials and policymakers is to recognize this connection, the authors write.

“For many years, we have missed this connection because we tend to create policy in silos –with education under one roof, housing and economic development under another, and health under yet another roof. In reality, these policy areas are all interconnected and influence one another.”

>>Recommended reading: Read the full story.

>>Recommended viewing: Life Expectancy Disparities along I-94.

Also watch a video with Arthur Rolnick about the return on investment for investing in early childhood education.

As thousands of people who are striving to improve health and health care convene in San Francisco, Calif., for the American Public Health Association Annual Meeting, RWJF is hosting brief interviews with thought leaders from across sectors. Brian Gallagher, President and CEO of United Way Worldwide, provided his thoughts on partnerships.

NewPublicHealth also spoke with Stacey Stewart, who was recently named to the new position of president of United Way USA. She was previously the executive Vice President, Community Impact Leadership and Learning at United Way Worldwide. Stewart shared her goals for UnitedWay USA, as well as what she's learned about the integral connections between education, income and health.

United Way of North Central Florida is focused on the building blocks that lead to a good quality of life – education, income and health – recognizing that communities are stronger when children are successful in school, families are financially stable and people are healthy. One of their primary roles is as a convener, to bring hundreds of organizations together across diverse sectors to set priorities and create change.

As part of our series looking at the work of United Ways across the nation in creating healthier communities, we spoke with Debbie Mason, President and CEO of the United Way of North Central Florida, and Mona Gil de Gibaja, Vice President of Community Impact, about their community planning process, strategies for effective partnerships, and the role of critical partners such as businesses and the local health department.

NewPublicHealth: What is the planning process you’re engaging in to set priorities around education, income and health?

Debbie Mason: Our major focus is education, but this is so inextricably linked to income and health. No matter where you start, you still wrap into the other two.

As the National Prevention Strategy is rolled out, NewPublicHealth will be speaking with Cabinet Secretaries, Agency directors and their designees to the Prevention Council about their prevention initiatives. Follow the series here.

We recently spoke with Donald Yu, Senior Counselor to the General Counsel of the U.S.Department of Education and designee to the National Prevention Council, about the connection between health and education.

>>Listen to a related podcast with the Secretary of the Department of Education, Arne Duncan.

NewPublicHealth: What is the connection between education, high school completion, employment and health?

Don Yu: Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has always said that education is the civil rights issue of our generation, and that concept has really infused all of our work in all of our areas. In terms of the question about how health relates to education, high school completion and employment, I think it’s intuitive but also backed up by emerging research that there is a strong correlation between good student health and improved performance on academic assessments. Obviously, if students are hungry they cannot focus in class; much less perform on a test. Or if they can’t see well, can’t see the blackboard, they obviously can’t learn as well, and my point about the civil rights issue is that those kinds of health disparities impact low income and minority communities the most.

NPH: And what are some of the initiatives and innovations already underway at the Department of Education to support the National Prevention Strategy?

Much attention has been paid on NewPublicHealth and elsewhere to the connection between education, health, economic opportunity, and even life expectancy. Sadly, when we consider the health and life trajectories for our young men of color in this country, it’s clear that we have a lot of work to do. Boys and young men of color are more likely to grow up in poverty, live in unsafe neighborhoods and attend schools that lack the basic resources and supports that kids need in order to thrive. In addition, actions that might be treated as youthful indiscretions by other young men often are judged more severely and result in harsher punishments that have lasting consequences. Only about half of African American, Hispanic and Native American boys graduate from high school on time with their cohort. Down the road, pathways to stable, productive employment can be limited – they commonly lack access to career and positive mentorship connections. And disparities in their access to and quality of health care services persist.

RWJF Program Officer Maisha Simmons attests that the options for our young men of color have been too limited for too long. That’s why today the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), through its Vulnerable Populations portfolio, launched the Forward Promise initiative to strengthen education opportunities, pathways to employment and health outcomes for boys and young men of color. A new Call for Proposals released by the initiative today will focus on the following areas:

• alternative approaches to harsh school discipline that do not push students out of school;
• solutions that focus on dropout prevention and increasing school graduation rates;
• mental health interventions that tailor approaches to boys and young men who have experienced and/or been exposed to violence and trauma; and
• career training programs that blend workforce and education emphases to ensure that students are college- and career-ready.

NewPublicHealth caught up with Maisha about the challenges facing young men of color and the quest for collaborative solutions.

NewPublicHealth: Paint us a picture of the health and quality of life of young men of color. What are some of the causes of the disparities that persist?

Maisha Simmons: If you look at the statistics around men of color, specifically African American men, they usually die sicker and younger than any other population in this country. There are a lot of variables, but what we’ve begun to focus on is, what are some of the non-traditional, non-medical factors that go into that?

So for us, we began to really focus on education, workforce and mental health issues and how they coincide with opportunities for health. When you look at young men and boys of color, their school outcomes are often worse. There are large number of young men not finishing school  and they often don’t finish high school with their cohorts. We know the linkages between school and employment often have a collective impact on health outcomes.

NPH:  What are some other experiences that influence the health and quality of life of young men of color?

The National Prevention and Health Promotion Strategy offers a comprehensive plan to increase the number of Americans who are healthy at every stage of life. A cornerstone of the Strategy is that it recognizes that good health comes not just from quality medical care, but also from the conditions we face where we live, learn, work and play—such as healthy homes, clean water and air and safe worksites. The strategy was developed by the National Prevention Council, which is composed of 17 federal agencies including the Department of Education, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and others.

As the Strategy is rolled out, NewPublicHealth will be speaking with Cabinet Secretaries, Agency directors and their designees to the Prevention Council about their prevention initiatives. Follow the series here.

We spoke with Arne Duncan, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, about the connection between health and education. Listen to the short podcast, and read the full interview below.

NewPublicHealth.org: The Department of Education is a member of the National Prevention Council. Why is health a priority for the Department?

Secretary Duncan: Very simply, if children aren’t healthy they can’t fulfill their academic and social potential. I always talk about the foundation of building blocks for great education, which includes good physical and emotional health. If children can’t see the blackboard they can’t do well. If children are hungry they can’t do well. If children are obese they are not going to do as well as they should. So we have to collectively make sure that children are physically and emotionally healthy so they can think about AP Chemistry and Biology and Physics and the rest of their learning.

NPH: What are the Department of Education’s key target areas and specific initiatives in implementing the National Prevention Strategy?

In conjunction with the third release of the County Health Rankings, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Virginia Commonwealth University’s Center on Human Needs have released an updated version of the County Health Calculator, an interactive, online app that illustrates the connection between social factors and health. The Calculator shows the impact that various social factors have on health and well-being, for U.S. states or counties. A key function of the Calculator is the ability to calculate how many premature deaths could be avoided in communities if more people had the better health that is so strongly linked with more education and higher income.

For example, if adults in Wyandotte, Kansas—where 39 percent have some college education—had the same education levels as the top county in the state— Johnson County at 78 percent—more than one out of three deaths (38 percent) could be averted per year.

This year, the County Health Calculator has been updated with additional features. NewPublicHealth spoke with Steven Woolf, MD, director of the Center for Human Needs and the lead designer of the County Health Calculator, about Version 2.0.

>>Read the full NewPublicHealth series on the launch of the 2012 County Health Rankings.

NewPublicHealth: What has been added to the new version of the calculator?

Steven Woolf: This is an upgraded version with new features. With the old calculator, users could pick any county or state of interest and see the effects of education and income on death rates in the area. The upgraded version will let people look not only at those factors but also on the effects on diabetes and on medical spending for diabetes.

NPH: How did you decide what changes to make to this calculator?