July 2011
In this Issue
NEW MEDIA:
- The White House announced its new webpage designed to engage American Indians. The webpage will provide updates and serve as a tool to educate people about how the President’s agenda is helping improve the future for American Indian and Alaska Native communities in many areas, including health. The website features blog posts, email updates, and resources from various governmental agencies.
- Campus Progress recently hosted a national conference that brought together more than 1,000 young people to discuss critical challenges their generation faces and to come up with ideas about how to overcome these obstacles and advance a progressive agenda. Campus Progress hosted a plenary session that included a discussion with Secretary Sebelius on the importance of engaging young adults in health reform.
PUBLICATIONS:
- Families USA’s latest report, Jobs at Risk: Federal Medicaid Cuts Would Harm State Economies, provides state-level data that show the devastating effect that the House Republican budget proposal would have. The proposal's substantial Medicaid cuts would harm program enrollees and their families and lead to a loss of business activity and jobs in all states. This report reveals potential job loss and loss of state business activity for each state. Families USA has also developed a federal and a state calculator to illustrate what a Medicaid cut would mean to the state and for the nation.
- Families USA released Sharing across the States: Strategies for Engaging Young Adults, which provides advice from experienced organizers to help state advocates engage with young adults. The piece discusses how to frame the health reform issue, organize on and off campus, and use traditional media and social media to reach the young adult audience.
- The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) created Your Guide to Medicare’s Preventive Services. The booklet highlights the new preventive services available to Medicare Part B beneficiaries. Some of these benefits include a yearly wellness visit, cancer screenings, and discounts on brand name prescription drugs if the patient falls into the gap in prescription drug coverage called the doughnut hole.
- The Kaiser Family Foundation developed two factsheets about the AIDS epidemic’s effect on African Americans and Latinos. In the factsheets, Black Americans and HIV/AIDS and Latinos and HIV/AIDS, readers learn that African Americans and Latinos account for a growing share of new HIV infections and AIDS diagnoses, and also how this epidemic affects these two communities.
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Comments Requested
HHS Announces New Standards to Improve Data Collection, Reduce Health Disparities
The Administration unveiled new draft standards for collecting and reporting data on race, ethnicity, sex, primary language, and disability status through the Affordable Care Act. This effort aims to help researchers, policy makers, health providers, and advocates identify and address health disparities afflicting racial and ethnic minorities. For more information on improving data collection to reduce health disparities please click here.
Public comments on the draft standards will be accepted until August 1st. Comments can be submitted electronically at http://www.regulations.gov. Enter docket ID number HHS-OMH-2011-0013 and click "Submit a Comment." You may also mail written comments to the following address: Office of Minority Health Resource Center, Attention: Affordable Care Act Section 4302 Data Standard Comments, P.O. Box 37337, Washington, DC 20013-73337.
HHS also announced its plans to begin collecting health data on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender populations. HHS will integrate questions on sexual orientation into national data collection efforts by 2013 and begin a process to collect information on gender identity.
HHS Takes First Steps to Cut Health Care Red Tape and Save $12 billion
HHS announced it would begin implementing a provision in the Affordable Care Act that reduces red tape in the health care system and saves an estimated $12 billion over the next ten years. These savings come from improved use of electronic standards for health information systems, which will help eliminate inefficient manual processes and reduce costs. This is the first step of many toward standardizing and improving electronic health care transactions. It will not only save health care providers and health insurance companies money, but it will also allow physicians’ offices to redirect time now spent on administrative tasks to patient care. For more details about the new rule, please click here.
Public comments on this regulation will be accepted until September 6th. Comments can be submitted electronically at http://www.regulations.gov. Follow the instructions for “Comment or Submission” to find the information collection document accepting comments. You may also mail written comments to the following address: CMS, Office of Strategic Operations and Regulatory Affairs, Division of Regulations Development, Attention: Document Identifier/OMB, Control Number, Room C4–26–05, 7500 Security Boulevard, Baltimore, Maryland 21244–1850.
HHS Updates
Obama Administration Releases National Prevention Strategy
Last month, members of the National Prevention, Health Promotion, and Public Health Council, including HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Surgeon General Regina Benjamin (chair of the council) released the National Prevention Strategy. This strategy, called for under the Affordable Care Act, will help transform our health care system from one focused on sickness and disease to one focused on prevention and wellness. The plan has four strategic directions: building healthy and safe community environments, expanding quality preventive services in both clinical and community settings, empowering people to make good health choices, and eliminating health disparities. For more information about the National Prevention Strategy, please click here.
HHS Announces New Investment in School-Based Health Centers
HHS and the Department of Education announced awards of $95 million to 278 school-based health center programs across the country. Provided by the Affordable Care Act, the awards will help clinics expand and provide more health care services at schools nationwide. These school-based health centers improve the overall health and wellness of all children through health screenings, preventive services, and education about their health. This will help to improve the health of our nation's kids and prepare them to do well in school. A full list of grantees is available at www.hhs.gov/news/press/2011pres/07/20110714grantee.html. To learn more about the School-Based Health Center Capital Program, visit www.hrsa.gov/ourstories/schoolhealthcenters/.
Affordable Care Act Funding Will Help Health Providers Improve Care
The Partnership for Patients is a new public-private partnership that will help improve the quality, safety, and affordability of health care for all Americans. HHS has announced that up to $500 million in funding will be available to improve care and to stop unnecessary readmissions and millions of preventable injuries and complications due to health care acquired conditions. This funding is made available through the Affordable Care Act. The Partnership for Patients brings together leaders of major hospitals, employers, physicians, nurses, and patient advocates along with state and federal governments in a shared effort to make hospital care safer, more reliable, and less costly. To learn more about this initiative, click here. You can also join the partnership by clicking here.
Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada
Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, or PLAN, was founded in 1994 in an effort to bring together progressive organizations in a unified force for social and environmental justice in Nevada. As a multi-issue organization, under the leadership of Executive Director Bob Fulkerson, PLAN aims to lessen economic and racial inequities statewide and nationwide, especially in health care. PLAN provides communities of color education on health reform, which empowers them to advocate on their own behalf and hold Nevada leadership accountable to issues of health equity.
Michael Ginsberg, the Southern Nevada director, echoes that racial equity is a cornerstone of their organization. All member organizations of PLAN must attend a training called “Dismantling Racism.” In the training, they illustrate and analyze institutional racism and how to work against it. For their upcoming training, health care will be the focus—using the film “Unnatural Causes” as a springboard. This training will go into depth about how the health care system operates under and reinforces racial inequities. From this training, PLAN hopes that the participants will learn more about how to recognize and combat racial inequities within their organizations.
Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, Ginsberg and his staff have focused on reaching out to different racial and ethnic groups to help educate and get them involved in health reform discussions. For example, PLAN has been working hard to protect Medicaid funding by engaging communities of color and their grasstops leadership. One example of this is their phone bank project, which is staffed predominantly by Latino mothers and seeks to engage the Latino community to do peer-to-peer education around current issues in health care.
PLAN is also known for canvassing neighborhoods. With the African American community, in particular, PLAN has done health care outreach in community centers and recreation centers. They also target African American churches and are often invited to speak at faith-based meetings. PLAN staff members provide information at after school programs, which encourages children to talk to their parents about health care issues. Their goal is to give information concerning health care rights to as many people in the community as possible.
In addition to education, PLAN wants to see health equity promoted systematically. The organization works to promote racial equity within Nevada’s health care system through their annual Racial Equity Report Card. This report tracks the governor’s and legislature’s actions around racial equity issues and grades them on their yearly performance. Before each legislative session, PLAN sends a copy of the previous year’s Report Card along with a message to all legislators to let them know about the current racial equity issues and their plan to evaluate them in the coming year. During the legislative session, PLAN works with legislators on preparing bills, tracks the status of bills, and lobbies for bills that promote racial equity. At the end of each session, PLAN works with an outside consultant to develop a report card that examines legislation introduced that directly impacts Nevada’s communities of color in areas such as education, economics, civil rights, and health. Using a letter grade scale, the report also grades each chamber of the state legislature separately, as well as the governor, on their responses to these bills. This year, the Nevada state legislature’s health equity grade was low since it failed to pass the only bill dealing with health and racial equity. Due to the low mark legislators received, some have come to PLAN to ask for help writing legislation that addresses health disparities.
PLAN continues its good work to ensure that the Affordable Care Act is protected and implemented in a way that alleviates racial disparities and ensures health equity for all Nevadans. Their success comes from sharing their expertise with the field, but also their willingness to learn from the field.
For more information, email Michael Ginsburg at mginsburg@planevada.org.
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- Health Equity Summit
The Affordable Care Act and Beyond: Opportunities for Achieving Health Equity
September 17, 2011
Oakland Asian Cultural Center, 388 9th Street #290, Oakland, CA 94607
For more information and to register, click here.
- National Indian Health Board 28th Annual Consumer Conference
September 26-29, 2011
Dena’ina Civic and Convention Center, 600 W. Seventh Avenue, Anchorage, AK 99501
Sponsor: National Indian Health Board
For more information and to register, click here.
- PA Cultural Competence in Disability Services Conference: Empowering the Forgotten Ones Through Systems Change
October 5, 2011
Temple University, Student Center (South), 1755 N 13th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19122
For more information and to register, click here.
- 6th Annual Many Faces of Community Health Conference
October 27-28, 2011
Hilton Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport Mall of America, 3800 American Blvd East, Bloomington, MN 55425
Sponsor: Many Faces of Community Health
For more information and to register, click here.
- APHA 139th Annual Meeting
October 29- November 2, 2011
Walter E. Washington Convention Center, 801 Mt Vernon Pl NW, Washington, DC 20001
Sponsor: American Public Health Association
For more information and to register, click here.
Requests for Local Publications
Here
at Families USA, we believe that public education is essential to
gaining support for health reform. We are asking that you help us in our
efforts to educate the public about the benefits of the Affordable Care
Act by informing us of local, state, and even national newspapers that
serve your community. We are especially interested in outlets that reach
various racial and ethnic groups and senior citizens. If you have any
questions or would like to submit publications, please contact the Health Equity Department at Families USA at healthequity@familiesusa.org.
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We’d like to hear from you!
If you would like to see your organization or event
highlighted in a future edition of our newsletter, please send us a
brief description of your organization and its activities, as well as
your contact information. We also welcome guest authors for
the Activities in the Field section of the newsletter. This section
provides members of the minority health field with the opportunity to
share their experiences and insights with other advocates. Please send
all correspondence to: healthequity@familiesusa.org.
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