Research shows that medical care only accounts for 10 percent of health outcomes. We now know that other factors contribute up to 90 percent to a person’s health, among them race, socio-economic status, education and the physical environment.

A new way of working together called Accountable Communities for Health, or ACH for short, is emerging to tackle this serious problem.

An ACH takes a comprehensive view of health that focuses on all the contributing factors at one time and seeks to develop new approaches that acknowledge people’s health is strongly affected by their community context.