Asthma Forum Participants Learn Value Propositions Make the Business Case for Asthma Management Programs
A succinct “value proposition” that strongly makes the business case for an asthma management program is a powerful tool for use in deal-making conversations with funders, insurers, partners and other potential supporters and with their communities. That was one of the take-away messages from this year’s National Asthma Forum, supported by The Cadmus Group Inc. under contract to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
A value proposition is simply a statement of the benefits a vendor promises to provide to customers in return for payment. Part bold promise and part clear request, it includes measurable results to which the asthma program will be held accountable.
Among the many benefits a value proposition provides is the shift in thinking asthma program managers make as they go through the process of developing a value proposition, according to Kate Hastings, the Cadmus principal who heads the team that supports EPA’s Asthma Program. “It gets them to think like enterprise leaders, and leaders are always thinking about growth, scale, and sustainability,” she said.
The importance of value propositions became apparent as Ms. Hastings’ team studied a variety of best-in-class asthma programs that were achieving remarkable, demonstrable, scalable, and sustainable results. “We studied outstanding programs that had found ways to either sell themselves to insurance plans, or that were insurance plans, and were able to get higher medical reimbursements because they could demonstrate the quality and costs returns their programs generated,” she said. Those programs have strong, clear and defensible value propositions, so in keeping with the asthma forum’s approach of drawing on the expertise of the nation’s leading asthma programs, value proposition creation became one of the topics of this year’s forum, which was held in early June.
To prepare for the session, Creating and Pitching Your Value Proposition—A Master Class in Deal Making, Cadmus analyzed five asthma programs to understand and help them articulate their value propositions. Forum attendees worked through a methodology Cadmus developed to begin preparing their own value propositions that touched on their programs’:
- Price
- Population served
- Value in terms of the results it will provide
- Efforts that will be managed to deliver the promised results
- Cost structure
- Plans for evaluating how well the program meets its commitments
Presentations and other materials from the 2009 National Asthma Forum are available at http://asthmacommunitynetwork.org/forum2009/. And more information on EPA’s asthma program is available at http://www.epa.gov/asthma/.
About The Cadmus Group, Inc.
Founded in 1983, employee-owned Cadmus (https://cadmusgroup.com) helps government, nonprofit, and corporate clients address critical challenges in the environmental and energy sectors. We provide an array of research and analytical services in the United States and abroad, specializing in solving complex problems that demand innovative, multidisciplinary thinking. Our major service areas are Water, Energy Services, Social Marketing and Market Transformation, Health Policy and Communications, Green Building, International Development, and Strategic Environmental Consulting.
Our staff includes scientists; engineers; statisticians; economists; MBAs; marketing, public relations, and communications professionals; attorneys; information technology specialists; and public policy analysts. Many of our senior consultants are nationally recognized experts in their fields and several serve on high-level U.S. government science advisory boards.
