December 2008

In this Issue:

• Last chance! Please complete our one-minute survey by Dec. 19th for the chance to have your fee waived (valued at $425) for our Health Action Conference in 2009! 

• New Resources 
  • NEW MEDIA
  • FELLOWSHIP OPPORTUNITIES  
  • PUBLICATIONS
    
    
• Activities in the Field
  
  
• Policy Updates
  
  
• Upcoming Events

How can Minority Health Connection better serve you? Please complete our one-minute survey by Dec. 19th. You may win the chance to have your fee waived (valued at $425) for our Health Action Conference in January! One lucky winner will be announced and notified on Dec. 23rd.

New Resources

NEW MEDIA:

• The Kaiser Family Foundation hosted a live webcast, Today's Topics in Health Disparities: Are Health Disparities Back on the National Agenda? Examining the Impact of a New Administration and Congress. Health policy experts discussed how the new Administration and Congress can prioritize efforts to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in health and health care. To view this webcast, click here.
  
• The Disparities Solutions Center hosted a webinar, Improving Quality and Addressing Disparities: Accreditation Standards, Market-Strategies and Levers for Action. This webinar highlights several organizations’ activities to identify and address racial/ethnic disparities in health care and improve the care provided to culturally diverse populations. To view this web seminar, click here.

FELLOWSHIP OPPORTUNITIES:

The Disparities Solutions Center 2009-2010 Disparities Leadership Program

The Disparities Solutions Center’s Disparities Leadership Program is a year-long executive education program designed for leaders from hospitals, health plans, and other health care organizations who wish to implement practical strategies to identify and address racial and ethnic disparities in health care, particularly through quality improvement. Interested parties should submit an Intent to Apply by February 9th, 2009 prior to submitting a complete application, which is due March 27th, 2009.

PUBLICATIONS:

• Families USA released Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008: Addressing Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, which discusses how the new Medicare law includes provisions to address health disparities within the Medicare population. MIPPA provisions include: improved data collection for measuring and evaluating health disparities and compliance with cultural competency standards.
  
• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published Promoting Health Equity: A Resource to Help Communities Address Social Determinants of Health. This workbook was created to help new and existing partnerships address the social determinants of health inequities in order to work towards eliminating health disparities. It highlights lessons learned by communities and provides tools to develop, implement, and evaluate interventions that address these social determinants.
  
• The Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved released two new reports, Persistent Disparities in Health Insurance Coverage: Hispanic Children, 1996 to 2005 and Strangers in a Strange Land: Health Care Experiences for Recent Latino Immigrants in Midwest Communities. The first report concludes that while the number of uninsured Hispanic children decreased from 1996-2005, Hispanic children still have a higher likelihood of being uninsured relative to non-Hispanic white children. The second report finds that Hispanic immigrants do not use or are unaware of local public health programs because of barriers to care, such as lack of health insurance and language barriers.
  
• The National Council of La Raza (NCLR) published A Burden No Child Should Bear: How the Health System is Failing Latino Children. The author concludes that Hispanic children disproportionately suffer from preventable health conditions, because they are more likely to be uninsured and/or have limited access to health care. To improve these health disparities, the report suggests that policy makers address the health coverage gap.
  
• The Commonwealth Fund released a new report, Racial Disparities in Access to Long-Term Care: The Illusive Pursuit of Equity.  The study concludes that African Americans tend to live in lower-quality nursing homes compared with whites, who have increasingly turned towards private, assisted-living facilities. According to the researchers, this represents an increasing separation of long-term chronic care and nursing home care—as well as a further division along racial lines.
  
• The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) published Uneven Progress: The Employment Pathways of Skilled Immigrants in the United States, which profiles 22 percent of the 6.1 million highly educated, documented immigrants many of whom are trained health care professionals. The report finds that despite the medical training received in their home countries, these individuals represent a ‘brain waste,’ because they are employed in low-level jobs in the United States. The MPI concludes that integrated English language and workforce training could alleviate this problem.
  
• The Journal of the American Geriatrics Society released Does Poorer Familiarity With Medicare Translate Into Worse Access to Health Care?, which concludes that African American and Hispanic Medicare beneficiaries are more likely than whites to be unfamiliar with their Medicare benefits. Poorer familiarity with Medicare may affect beneficiaries' ability to access care, may lead them to delay or avoid seeking care, and ultimately may negatively affect the quality of care they receive. Well-designed educational interventions or policies that simplify Medicare benefit programs could have a positive impact on beneficiaries' abilities to get needed care. To view an abstract of this article, click here.

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Activities in the Field

The Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium

The Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC) was formed in December 1997 to manage statewide health services for Alaska Natives. The ANTHC works to provide Alaska Native communities with specialty medical care, clean water and sanitation facilities, information technology, professional recruiting, and educational support. The ANTHC also performs health research and trains health care professionals. Its mission is “providing the highest quality health services in partnership with our people and the Alaska Tribal Health System.”

All Alaska Natives, through their tribal governments and through their regional nonprofit organizations, own the Consortium. It is located on the Alaska Native Health Campus in Anchorage, Alaska, and it is the largest and most comprehensive tribal health organization in the country. Tribal health organizations are foundations, tribes, associations, consortiums, and communities dedicated to American Indians and/or Alaskan Native groups.

ANTHC is one of 22 co-signers of the Alaska Tribal Health Compact, a self-governance agreement with the Indian Health Service. Self-governance is designed to provide tribal governments with more control and decision-making authority over the federal financial resources provided for the benefit of American Indians and Alaska Natives. Through the compact, the Indian Health Service and tribal programs provide health services to approximately 1.5 million American Indians and Alaska Natives who belong to 556 federally recognized tribes in 35 states.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, cancer is the second leading cause of death among American Indians and Alaskan Natives over the age of 45. Additionally, Alaska Natives have significantly lower survival rates from cancer than any other ethnic group in the United States. In November, the American Cancer Society awarded the ANTHC with a five-year grant to develop projects that use art, such as storytelling and dance, to educate Alaska Natives on cancer awareness, detection, and treatment. In one project, village elders receive two hours of cancer education. The project seeks to engage the Alaska Native community using indigenous ways of understanding and will seek out "pathways to communicate cancer understanding in culturally appropriate ways.”

The ANTHC works to provide high-quality services for its patient population, its tribal organizations, and local communities.

For more information, visit the ANTHC website at www.anthc.org or call at 907.729.1900.

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Policy Updates

Senator Max Baucus’s Call to Action on Health Reform

Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) has released a white paper that calls for health reform in 2009 that will achieve coverage for every American and address the underlying problems in our health system. Baucus’s Call to Action is a policy brief that offers a sustainable plan for health care reform, including health care coverage, quality, and cost. Many parts of his plan would require an initial financial investment but, over time, would improve the quality and reduce the cost of the health care that Americans receive—putting our system on a more sustainable path. 

Baucus focuses a chapter on addressing racial and ethnic health disparities. The Senator suggests several factors affecting health care for racial and ethnic minorities, one of which is lack of access to care. Inadequate access, according to Baucus, is due to lack of health insurance coverage, language barriers, and geographic location. To tackle lack of health coverage, Baucus would make health care available and affordable by offering subsidies to low-income families. To address language barriers among a diverse patient population, health providers should be linguistically and culturally competent. In addition to addressing health coverage and cultural competency, Baucus states that policies which address inadequate housing, poor wages, education, and clean environments—or social determinants of health—are equally as important. Finally, Baucus calls for the complete standardization of data collection. This requires that more data is collected based on race, ethnicity, and gender.

To read Senator Baucus’s paper, click here.

Upcoming Events

• 2008 Indian Health Information Management Conference: Managing Health Information Technology to Improve Performance and Outcomes
  December 15-19, 2008
  The Hyatt Regency Phoenix, 122 North 2nd Street, Phoenix, AZ 85004
  Sponsors: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Indian Health Service
  For more information and to register, click here. 
  
• National Institutes of Health (NIH) Summit: The Science of Eliminating Health Disparities
  December 16-18, 2008
  Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, 201 Waterfront St, Oxon Hill, MD, 20745
  Sponsors: National Center on Minority Health and Disparities
  For more information and to register, click here.
  
• A Health Care Community Discussion: Health Care Reform and Eliminating Racial Health Care Disparities Webinar
  December 30, 2008 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
  Sponsor: University of Dayton School of Law
  To register for the webinar and for more info, click here.
  
• National Grassroots Meeting: Health Action 2009
  January 29-31, 2009
  Renaissance Mayflower Hotel, 1127 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington DC, DC 20036
  Sponsors: Families USA
  For more information and to register, click here.  
  
• Third National Leadership Summit on Eliminating Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health: A Blueprint for Change
  February 25-27, 2009
  The Gaylord National, 201 Waterfront Street, National Harbor, MD 20745
  Sponsors: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health
  For more information and to register, click here.  

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