By JAMES S. MARKS, ROBERT WOOD JOHNSON FOUNDATION

In an editorial on Wednesday, The New York Times debunks the often-cited claim that America has the best health care system in the world.  For the politicians who routinely use this as a plank in their efforts to stifle reform, the Urban Institute study (disclosure: this study was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation) is an objective rebuke. The U.S. health care system is not the best – far from it.  And Americans, with a life expectancy that still trails many other countries, are not the healthiest people in the world.

Clearly, this country desperately needs health reform.  But the study, the editorial, and the entire current discourse around health care neglect an important truth about reform: fixing the health care system alone will not significantly improve Americans’ health.

For example: medical spending consumes 16 percent of the U.S. GDP and is projected to reach a staggering one dollar for every five earned by 2018.  And yet, only 10-15 percent of preventable mortality is linked to health care.  This and our terribly poor international rankings in length of life are telling signs that our tremendous investment does not do enough to address the factors that make us sick in the first place.

Our current national debate must look beyond health care – the so-called repair shop of our health system – and focus on our health.  Fixing health care will require insurance reform, cost containment and sound economic policy.  Fixing health will require us to look at our neighborhoods, our schools and our workplaces.  From our earliest years of life, these are the places that determine how long and how well we live in America.  The recommendations of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Commission to Build a Healthier America, which identify pockets of success where programs are making a real difference in people’s health, provide a useful place to start.

In schools, where obesity threatens the current generation of children with sicker and shorter lives than those of their parents, solutions are critically needed.  By guaranteeing daily physical activity in schools – which fewer than 3.8 percent of elementary schools provide – and linking federal funds for school meals to their nutritional value, we can reverse the epidemic and help our children grow up healthy.

In our neighborhoods and communities, we must consider the health impact of investments and development to ensure that they help promote physical activity, make healthy foods more readily available and lay a foundation for prosperity.  With public-private partnerships, we can bring grocery stores and nutritious food into underserved neighborhoods and help both the stores and the neighborhoods thrive.  By incorporating bike lanes, sidewalks and trails into our transportation planning, we can help make the daily lives of Americans more physically active.

All of this amounts to a change in the way we think about health in this country.  Health care reform, while critically important, will not avert the crisis of poor health that we’re facing.  The Times editorial and Urban Institute study shine an important light on the dubious claim that we have the best health care system in the world, but they don’t go far enough.  It’s time that we debunk the larger myth, that Americans are the healthiest people in the world, so all of us – from the halls of Congress to the family dinner table – can start working to improve the health of the country we love.

Dr. James S. Marks, M.D., M.P.H., senior vice president at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and director of the Foundation’s Health Group.  Dr. Marks oversees all of the Foundation’s work in childhood obesity, public health and vulnerable populations.  Prior to RWJF, Dr. Marks was an assistant surgeon general and director of CDC’s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.