April 2011
In this Issue
NEW MEDIA:
- The New York Times developed an online tool, Mapping the 2010 U.S. Census, that illustrates population growth and decline, changes in racial and ethnic concentrations, and patterns of housing development at a county level, for all 50 states.
- The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation hosted a webinar titled What Shapes Health?. The panelists provided insight on how early life experiences can affect health outcomes and the importance of health education in shaping healthy behaviors. The webinar shows that the costs of poor health are shared not only by individuals but by their families and, ultimately, by all Americans. Lastly, the webinar addresses how policy makers and advocates can reduce health care costs and improve lifelong health for all Americans.
- Virginia Commonwealth University’s Center on Human Needs unveiled the County Health Calculator, an interactive online application that shows how level of education and income influence premature death rates by county.
- The University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation created a new tool called County Health Rankings to highlight factors that influence people’s health and how long they live. The tool looks at a variety of measures that affect health, such as the number of premature deaths (deaths before age 75), high school graduation rates, the percentage of people who have access to healthy foods, air pollution levels in the county, smoking rates, rate of obesity, and number of teen births. It also measures the overall health of each county in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
RESEARCH PARTICIPATION OPPORTUNITIES:
- The American Cancer Society is asking individuals to enroll in a new research study called the Cancer Prevention Study - 3 (CPS-3). The American Cancer Society’s Epidemiology Research Program is inviting men and women between the ages of 30 and 65 years of age who have no personal history of cancer to join this historic research study. The ultimate goal is to enroll 500,000 adults from various racial/ethnic backgrounds from across the United States to get a better understanding of how to prevent cancer and save lives. The study uses questionnaires to identify lifestyle, behavioral, environmental, and genetic cancer connections that cannot be found in the lab. For more information about this study, click here.
PUBLICATIONS:
- The Center of American Progress released Community Health Centers: Engines of Economic Activity and Job Creation, a testimony given by Center for American Progress Senior Health Policy Analyst Ellen-Marie Whelan before the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee. In the testimony, Whelan discusses the important role health centers play in the delivery of quality, accessible, cost-effective health care. She highlights the important economic role that health centers play in their communities.
- The Center for American Progress also released several issue briefs detailing how health reform affects communities of color, women and families, and LGBTQ populations. First, Fair, Effective, and Efficient Health Care, explores how the new health law helps alleviate health coverage disparities among different racial and ethnic groups and enhances protections for consumers, which is particularly important for many low-income people of color. Top Five Ways Health Reform Is Helping Women and Their Families illustrates how health reform is already helping women by keeping families covered and focusing on prevention. Lastly, in Changing the Game, authors explore how the new health law already affects the LGBTQ community, and how they and their allies can continue to advocate for broad inclusion as the law is fully implemented between now and 2014.
- The Congressional Budget Office conducted a long-term analysis of Senator Paul Ryan’s proposal to substantially change federal payments under the Medicare and Medicaid programs, eliminate the subsidies to be provided through new insurance exchanges under last year’s major health care legislation, leave Social Security as it would be under current law, and set paths for all other federal spending (excluding interest) and federal tax revenues at specified growth rates or percentages of gross domestic product (GDP). It shows that the proposal would cause many to lose their Medicaid and Medicare health coverage.
- The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) developed the HHS Action Plan to Reduce Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities. The plan outlines goals, strategies, and actions that HHS will take to reduce health disparities among racial and ethnic minorities. It builds on provisions of the Affordable Care Act that will help address the needs of racial and ethnic minority populations by bringing down health care costs, investing in prevention and wellness, supporting improvements to primary care, and strengthening the nation’s health and human services workforce.
- The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) also released the National Stakeholder Strategy for Achieving Health Equity. The plan is a product of the National Partnership for Action to End Health Disparities (NPA), which is coordinated by the HHS Office of Minority Health. It provides a common set of goals and objectives for public and private sector initiatives and partnerships to help racial and ethnic minorities and other underserved groups reach their full health potential. The strategy incorporates ideas, suggestions, and comments from thousands of individuals and organizations across the country. Local groups can use the National Stakeholder Strategy to identify which goals are most important for their communities and adopt the most effective strategies and action steps to help reach them.
- The National Partnership for Women and Families developed a series of fact sheets relating to how the Affordable Care Act helps women. The first fact sheet titled The Affordable Care Act: Improving Health Care for Women highlights how repeal would reverse progress to making affordable, quality health care a reality for women and their families. The second fact sheet, The Affordable Care Act: Easing the Burden on Older Women, focuses on older women, who are more vulnerable than men to the increasing cost of care because they have lower wages on average and have spent more time out of the workforce to take care of their families. Lastly, The Affordable Care Act: Increasing Access to Health Care for Lower-Income Women and Families examines how health reform alleviates the problem of leaving many lower-income women with inadequate or no health insurance.
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Legislative Update
Representative Paul Ryan Releases 2012 Budget
On April 5th, Representative Paul Ryan introduced a proposal that slashes up to $6 trillion in the next 10 years from spending, overhauls sections of the tax code, and reforms and cuts entitlements. Ryan’s plan would cut Medicaid by $735 billion, Medicare by $389 billion, non-security discretionary spending by $923 billion, and health care spending by $1.4 trillion by repealing health care reform. On April 15, the House of Representatives passed the Republican budget proposal with a vote of 235-193, with every Democrat voting "no."
Senate Passes Repeal of 1099 Provision
On March 3rd, the House of Representatives voted to repeal the 1099 tax-reporting requirement in Affordable Care Act, a provision that would have been burdensome for small businesses, by a count of 314-112. On April 5th, the Senate voted 87-12 to repeal as well. Unfortunately, the offset agreed upon to pay for the repeal of 1099 eliminates the “safe harbor” provision in the Affordable Care Act, which will raise taxes on the middle class and make it harder for them to afford private health insurance. The President has signed the bill into law.
Comments Requested
Affordable Care Act to Improve Quality of Care for People with Medicare
HHS released proposed new rules to help doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers better coordinate care for Medicare patients through Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). Under the proposed rule, an ACO refers to a group of providers and suppliers of services (e.g., hospitals, physicians, and others involved in patient care) that will work together to coordinate care for the patients they serve with original Medicare (that is, those who are not in a Medicare Advantage private plan). The goal of an ACO is to deliver seamless, high-quality care for Medicare beneficiaries. For a fact sheet about ACOs, click here. For more about the proposed rule, click here. Comments are due June 6 and can be submitted at http://www.regulations.gov. Follow the ‘‘Submit a comment’’ instructions.
HHS Updates
Departments of Justice and HHS Join forces to Tackle Health Care Fraud
Attorney General Eric Holder and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius visited Detroit to participate in the fifth regional health care fraud prevention summit. These summits bring together a wide array of federal, state, and local partners; beneficiaries; providers; and other interested parties to discuss innovative ways to eliminate fraud within the U.S. health care system. The summits are part of a larger effort on behalf of the Obama Administration to root out waste, fraud, and abuse within the U.S. health care system. For a summary of new tools and resources the Affordable Care Act has put in place to help fight fraud, click here.
ACA Prevention Benefits Increase Access and Lower Costs for Medicare Beneficiaries
The Affordable Care Act brings new benefits and savings to millions of people covered by Medicare in 2011. As of January 1, 2011, Medicare beneficiaries no longer have to pay deductibles, co-insurance, or copayments for many preventive services covered by Medicare or for recommended services that are newly covered by the program. These services include certain cancer screenings, such as mammograms and colonoscopies, as well as a new annual wellness visit. During the annual wellness visit, doctors and beneficiaries can develop and/or update a personalized prevention plan that takes into account medical and family history, detection of any cognitive impairment, evaluation of risk factors for depression, and a review of the individual’s functional ability and level of safety when alone. To read an HHS report about how people are already benefiting from these newly covered services, click here.
DOL Job-Based Health Insurance Data to Assist in Determining Essential Benefits Package
The Affordable Care Act requires the Department of Labor (DOL) to conduct a survey about employer-sponsored health insurance plans to guide regulators in the decision-making process for the “essential benefits” that health plans will be required to cover in state exchanges beginning in 2014. The DOL releases an annual survey of employer benefits every August, but it is also working to complete a special survey of 12 additional benefits, including emergency room visits, ambulance services, diabetes care management, and kidney dialysis. The Affordable Care Act gives the HHS Secretary discretion to determine the essential benefits plans must include, with input from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and DOL’s employer survey. The IOM is expected to make its recommendations in the upcoming months so HHS can have a final proposal ready by the end of the year.
Established in 1970, Health Outreach Partners began as a direct service program working with a few communities along the East Coast. With the goal of improving the lives of those in hard-to-reach populations (e.g., farm workers, low-income populations, immigrants, homeless, and others), the organization shifted from direct service work to specialize in providing training, consultation, and information services to community health centers. Health Outreach Partners now conducts work throughout the entire country with headquarters stationed in Oakland, California; Seattle, Washington; and Washington, DC.
Health Outreach Partners works with community centers that perform health promotion outreach to these hard-to-reach groups. They work to build each center’s capacity by developing trainings and health education strategies. The organization also does program development for the centers, which ranges from helping them write job descriptions to creating education resources that target specific communities. The organization does consistent evaluations to ensure that their technical assistance is effective. In addition to working with these centers, Health Outreach Partners also works with other community-based organizations to help them facilitate relationships with consumer groups and professionals who work with populations they wish to reach.
To do this work effectively, they realize that their outreach efforts and technical assistance must also evolve. One step in doing this is through peer-to-peer events designed for the community health center health professionals. Health Partners found it difficult to convene outreach workers who work one-on-one with farm workers, migrant workers, uninsured populations, and the homeless. So, Health Partners is experimenting with a tool called the WebEx event center to host the peer-to-peer events. This will allow them to communicate with outreach workers. The tool creates an interactive virtual conference where panelists and the host discuss the topic at hand, and participants can also engage in the dialogue by posing questions and interacting with other online participants. Health Partners’ goal is to understand how farm workers, migrant workers, and other populations in remote locations perceive the health care system and how these groups receive care.
The following exciting and informative events comprise this year's Peer to Peer Event series: The Legal Rights of Immigrants in an Anti-Immigrant Climate: Implications on Health Access (April 28th, 2011), The Patient Centered Medical Home (May 26th, 2011), and the Poison Prevention: Strategies and Techniques to Enhance Your Skills for Reaching Low-Income Communities (June 23rd, 2011). These topics have been chosen based on the demonstrated health needs in communities throughout the United States as well as interest from national outreach and health professionals.
For more information, contact Mollie McKillop at Health Outreach Partners at mollie@outreach-partners.org.
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- 2011 and Beyond: Latino Health Equity Conference
May 12, 2011
Portland State University, Smith Hall, 724 SW Harrison Street, Portland, OR 97201
Sponsor: Familias en Accion
For more information and to register, click here.
- Voices 2011: Purposeful Leadership for Tangible Outcomes
May 16-17, 2011
Crystal Gateway Marriott, 1700 Jefferson Davis Highway, Arlington, VA 2202
Sponsor: Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum
For more information and to register, click here.
- NAACP Leadership 500
May 26-29, 2011
Westin Diplomat Hotel, 3555 S. Ocean Drive, Hollywood, FL 33019
Sponsor: NAACP
For more information and to register, click here.
- American Public Health Association Mid-Year Meeting—Implementing Health Reform: A Public Health Approach
June 23-25, 2011
Sheraton Chicago Hotel and Towers, 301 East North Water Street, Chicago, IL 60611
Sponsor: American Public Health Association
For more information and to register, click here.
- 2011 NCLR Annual Conference: Embrace Now
July 23-26, 2011
Washington Marriott Wardman Park Hotel and Omni Sheraton Hotel, Washington, DC 20008
Sponsor: National Council of La Raza
For more information and to register, click here.
- 102nd NAACP Annual Convention
July 23-28, 2011
Los Angeles Convention Center, 1201 S. Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, CA 90015
Sponsor: NAACP
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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