In collaboration with a host of community partners, HealthInsight has developed a new Utah-specific consumer Web site, Utah Healthscape http://utahhealthscape.org/ the first-of-its-kind Web portal for Utah health consumers. Healthscape is a one-stop shop for patients interested in learning more about provider, hospital, and health plan characteristics, performance data and service offerings.
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Thursday, November 3, 2011
Coronary Heart Disease: A Burden for American Indians and Alaska Natives
Heart disease and cancer are the leading causes of death for American Indians and Alaska Natives (AI/AN). A variety of health disparities affect AI/AN communities, including, disproportionately high prevalence for diabetes, suicide, teenage pregnancy, infant death, unintentional and motor vehicle injuries, chronic liver disease, cirrhosis, and coronary heart disease.>>Learn more
Unvaccinated behind largest U.S. measles outbreak in years
The largest U.S. outbreak of measles to occur in 15 years -- affecting 214 children so far -- is likely driven by travelers returning from abroad and by too many unvaccinated U.S. children, according to new research.
The finding could highlight the dangers of a trend among some U.S. parents to skip the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine for their children, out of what many experts call misguided fears over its safety.
Dr. Andrew Pavia, professor of pediatrics at the University of Utah and spokesman for the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), said, "The good news is that we are seeing introductions of measles that are being contained as small outbreaks."
Pavia credits containment to high levels of vaccination and thevacci rapid response by public health officials. However, if an outbreak occurred in a "really susceptible population the outcome could be very different," he said.
"What would happen in an area with a lot of vaccine refusers? Then you might see a much larger outbreak," he said.
IRS Seeks Workforce Diversity
President Obama recently made an executive order to promote diversity and inclusion government-wide, but the Internal Revenue Service doesn’t need a mandate. The agency already created a comprehensive, 5-year “Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan” to “promot[e] a corporate culture which values diversity and inclusion, maintain a working environment free from unlawful discrimination, and ensur[e] that we continue to hold a deep respect for the civil rights of all of America’s taxpayers.”
Read the rest of the article at http://www.diversityandinclusionprofessionals.org/dimensions_irs_ho.html
Read the rest of the article at http://www.diversityandinclusionprofessionals.org/dimensions_irs_ho.html
Health Affairs Special Issue on Disparities
A Closer Look at Disparities in Health Care
October Issue of Health Affairs Features Studies Supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Examining Causes, Consequences of Health DisparitiesHealth disparities are a serious problem in the United States. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported in April that racial and ethnic minorities are less likely to get the preventive care they need to stay healthy, more likely to suffer from serious illnesses, and when they do get sick, are less likely to have access to quality health care. The October issue of Health Affairs looks at disparities from a number of perspectives, featuring the work of several Scholars and experts funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). Among the articles in the new issue:In this commentary, RWJF Health & Society Scholar Margaret Takako Hicken and co-authors recommend that governments and research institutions shift their approaches to health disparities to focus on cumulative risks associated with social and environmental factors, such as stress.
RWJF Physician Faculty Scholar Renee Yuen-Jan Hsia and her co-author look at how closures of hospital trauma centers are affecting Blacks, people without insurance, people living in poverty and other disadvantaged communities. This research was supported by a grant from Changes in Health Care Financing and Organization, an RWJF initiative.
With an emerging consensus that activating consumers is essential to the success of health reform, authors measured how confident, skillful and knowledgeable Blacks, Whites and Hispanics are about taking an active role in improving their health and health care. The research was conducted by: Peter J. Cunningham of the Center for Studying Health System Change, which was founded by RWJF; Judith Hibbard, a professor of Health Policy at the University of Oregon; and Claire B. Gibbons, senior program officer at RWJF.
Because they will not be eligible for public insurance or private coverage through exchanges under health reform, undocumented immigrants will eventually constitute a larger percentage of the nation's uninsured population. Funding for this research, authored by experts at the Urban Institute, was provided by Changes in Health Care Financing and Organization.
To evaluate the effect of the Institute of Medicine's 2003 call on health plans to collect data on their members' race and ethnicity as a foundation for improving the quality of care and reducing disparities, authors describe the progress made toward collecting these data, the most commonly used data collection methods, and the challenges plans have encountered. The study was funded through an RWJF grant to the America's Health Insurance Plans Foundation. Lead author, Jose Escarcé, is an alumnus of the RWJF Clinical Scholars program and coauthor, Elise Lawson, is a current Clinical Scholar at UCLA.
New York-Presbyterian Hospital's Regional Health Collaborative is a population-based health care model to improve the health of the residents of Washington Heights-Inwood, a predominantly Hispanic community in New York City with high rates of asthma, diabetes, heart disease, and depression. The authors outline this initiative as a model for other urban academic medical centers to better serve populations facing social and cultural barriers to care. Lead author, J. Emilio Carillo, vice president of community health at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, was supported in this work through the RWJF-funded Network for Multicultural Research on Health and Health Care.
Poor Birth Outcomes Linked to Autism, Air Pollution
Autism Five Times More Likely in Low Birth Weight Infants
HealthDay, 10/17/2011
Low-birthweight babies are five times more likely to develop autism than normal-weight babies, a new study says.
Air Pollution Tied to Raised Risk of Preemie Birth
USA Today, Robert Preidt, HealthDay, 10/15/2011
Traffic-related air pollution may put pregnant women at risk for a premature birth, according to a new study.
HealthDay, 10/17/2011
Low-birthweight babies are five times more likely to develop autism than normal-weight babies, a new study says.
Air Pollution Tied to Raised Risk of Preemie Birth
USA Today, Robert Preidt, HealthDay, 10/15/2011
Traffic-related air pollution may put pregnant women at risk for a premature birth, according to a new study.
New Standards for Health Disparities Research
Improving Health Disparities Research
By Dr. Howard Koh, HHS Assistant Secretary for HealthPosted October 31, 2011
Today, we are achieving yet another milestone, by implementing an important provision of the Affordable Care Act that will improve the collection of data on HHS-sponsored surveys. With this advance, we as a nation can better understand and target health disparities and ultimately move toward eliminating them.
After reviewing the more than 400 public comments we received on draft standards proposed last June, we are now publishing final standards for data collection and reporting on race, ethnicity, sex, primary language and disability status. Previously, identifying and reducing disparities has been limited by a lack of uniformity, specificity, and quality in data collection and reporting. Now, consistent methods for collecting and reporting health data will help us to better characterize and compare the nature of health problems in targeted populations. These new data standards, required by the Affordable Care Act, represent a powerful new set of tools to move us closer to our vision of a nation free of disparities in health and health care.
With respect to race and ethnicity, we can now collect more data on key groups. For example, by adding Mexican American and Chicano/a, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Other Hispanic Latino/a or Spanish origin as explicit categories on all HHS-sponsored health surveys, we can better capture, understand and act upon the specific challenges presented by each ethnic group -- challenges that would otherwise be lost under broader terms, like “Hispanic” or “Latino.” Such detail could possibly shed light on health problems such as initial studies that suggest the diabetes-related mortality rate for Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans may be twice as high as that seen for Cuban Americans.
With respect to disability and primary language, this announcement also breaks new ground. These first- ever uniform disability standards will ultimately improve researchers' abilities to monitor and track health disparities in this critical public health area. And, for the first time, we can collect in a standardized way, information of the primary language spoken by a person or in a household.
Separately, we are continuing to implement efforts that will ultimately allow integration of questions on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) health into national HHS data collection efforts. Expanding data collection to include information on the health of the LGBT population is important to understanding and tackling disparities.
The Department’s data collection efforts under these new standards will continue to ensure privacy protection and apply all appropriate information security safeguards in the collection, analysis, and sharing of data.
All these advances collectively strengthen the critical information by which we, as a nation, identify and address disparities in the future. For more on the final data standards on race, ethnicity, sex, primary language and disability status, please visit www.minorityhealth.hhs.gov/section4302.
Best,
Subhan Cheema
Office of Intergovernmental and External Affairs
Office of Intergovernmental and External Affairs
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
www.healthcare.gov
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