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April 2007
In this Issue:
April is National Minority Health Month! If your organization is commemorating the month with special activities or projects, we would love to hear about them. We also encourage you to submit to our “Activities in the Field” section, to provide a closer look at what your organization is doing to help improve minority health and to share your experiences and reflections. As always, we invite you to send us suggestions for improvement. Please send all comments to minorityhealth@familiesusa.org. Thank you, and happy reading!
New Resources
NEW MEDIA:
PUBLICATIONS:
Activities in the Field
Policy Updates
Children's Health Coverage
Upcoming Events
NEWS MEDIA:
- The Applied Research Center (ARC) and COLORLINES Magazine have made various resources from their Facing Race 2007 conference available on the ARC Web site, the ARC blog, and on the Facing Race wiki.
- Families USA has posted a new page on the Minority Health Initiatives section of the Web site with links to various Faith Based Efforts and Resources to encourage faith leaders to become involved in health care advocacy.
- Kaiser Family Foundation issued a new data update that shows the percentage of whites, African Americans, and Hispanics in all 50 states and the District of Columbia that are uninsured, enrolled in Medicaid, and living in poverty. The data also provide a quick glance at disparities in rates of infant mortality, diabetes-related mortality, and AIDS cases between these racial and ethnic groups.
- The Program for Bioethics and Film housed in the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics will air a new documentary, Hold Your Breath, on select public broadcast stations this month. The film illuminates the importance of cross-cultural communication as an Afghani-American man battles cancer and attempts to navigate the western medical system.
- Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars’ Global Health Initiative has posted a webcast of their Health Status Disparities in the United States event held on April 4.
PUBLICATIONS:
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The Uniformed Services University (USU) Center for Health Disparities Research and Education and National Minority Health Month
Throughout National Minority Health Month, organizations across the country are raising awareness of racial and ethnic health disparities and implementing initiatives to reduce the problems faced by communities of color and the rural and urban poor. In 1914, Dr. Booker T. Washington, founder and president of Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University), launched a national public health education campaign in Tuskegee Institute, Alabama. The campaign, National Health Improvement Week, later became National Negro Health Week, and focused on the need to inform the federal government of the poor health and disproportionately high death rates among black communities in America. Diverse stakeholders from across the country including community members—both black and white; local, county, and state governments; and national organizations developed local observances and spearheaded a national movement to reduce health disparities. Dr. Booker T. Washington’s legacy continues today through National Minority Health Month which was proclaimed as the month of April by the 107th Congress. The primary goal of National Minority Health Month is to raise awareness about health disparities among vulnerable populations including, but not limited to, Blacks and African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians.
The USU Center for Health Disparities Community Outreach and Information Dissemination Core (COIDC) joined this public education effort by inviting community organizations across the nation to use its National Minority Health Promise. The promise was created to raise awareness and encourage community members to talk with their health care providers during National Minority Health Month (as well as throughout the year) about how they can improve their quality of care and reduce their risk of health care disparities. To obtain a copy of the National Minority Health Promise, please contact Jateya Jones by email at jjones@usuhs.mil.
For more information on the USU Center for Health Disparities Research and Education, Community Outreach and Information Dissemination Core, you may call the Center at 301-589-1175 x16 or visit the web site us at www.usuchd.org/HDOutreach.
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Children’s Health Coverage
Last month, Congress took a major step toward expanding children’s health coverage. Both the House and the Senate passed budget resolutions with $50 billion in new money for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), in addition to the $25 billion assumed in the baseline. This increase in funding shows that Congress is willing to make SCHIP reauthorization a top priority this year and significantly expand coverage to the nine million children who are currently uninsured.
But allowing for increased funding in the budget is only the first step in a long process. Congress must now find a way to pay for this coverage expansion. The $75 billion for SCHIP is not guaranteed, but must be paid for by either creating new revenue sources or finding savings from existing programs.
For example, Congress could increase the federal excise tax on cigarettes as a way of partly offsetting the cost of expanding coverage. Increasing the tobacco tax would not only help pay for a coverage expansion, but it would also discourage smoking and reduce health care costs associated with tobacco use. African American men are more likely to develop and die from lung cancer than other racial groups, and lung cancer is one of the leading causes of death for Latino men and women. Increasing the tobacco tax not only makes good economic sense, but it could also help decrease health disparities caused by differences in smoking rates.
Another option being considered by lawmakers is to reduce the excessive payments currently being paid to private Medicare plans. On average, Medicare payment rates to private Medicare Advantage plans are 12 percent higher than the cost of providing comparable care through traditional fee-for-service Medicare. Congress could require that private plans be paid the same amounts that Medicare would pay for treating the same patients under traditional Medicare. This would level the playing field for Medicare plans while producing billions in savings for the federal government that could be used to expand coverage.
A third option to help pay for SCHIP reauthorization is to better enforce existing tax obligations, so that people pay the taxes they owe. For example, Representative Emanuel (D-IL) has proposed steps that would ensure that people pay the appropriate capital gains taxes they owe by requiring better reporting of the difference between stock purchase and selling prices.
As SCHIP reauthorization moves forward, it is important that members of Congress consider all available funding options. By making SCHIP a top priority this year, Congress can make significant progress toward providing all children with high quality, affordable health care.
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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: minorityhealth@familiesusa.org.
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