Happy Valentine (Not So Much) from President Obama

Charmaine Ruddock, director of Bronx Health REACH, is a coalition of 50 community and faith-based organizations, funded by the Centers for Disease Control’s REACH 2010 Initiative to address racial and ethnic health disparities.

Happy Valentine (Not So Much) from President Obama

A week ago on Valentine’s Day REACH communities across the country received the kind of Valentine’s Day gift that had no love behind it.  Included in the President’s proposed budget for FY12 was the defunding of the 12 year REACH program. REACH which stands for Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health is CDC’s cornerstone effort to address the stubborn and persistent gap between the health outcomes of whites and those of people of color be they Asian/Pacific Islanders, Blacks, Hispanics, Alaska Natives and American Indians.  The genius of this effort is that in 1999 CDC took the unprecedented approach that the communities most affected by disparities should take the lead in addressing their disparities.  By all accounts this was a major departure in public health.  Heretofore, health disparities was something studied and researched with papers written and academic treatises produced but not much done in terms of addressing them in the local context where there were occurring and definitely not with a community based participatory approach. Enter REACH.  In 1999, under the leadership of the then head of CDC, Dr.David Saatcher grants were made to 36 communities.  Their mandate was to convene coalitions made up of people who work, worship, and live in the community –residents, healthcare providers, academic institutions, faith-based organizations, public health departments, elected officials, business people etc. The Coalitions first task was to put together a community action plan to address the prevailing disparity and its underlying contributing factors in their community.  This was no knight in shining armor riding in on a white horse telling ‘those people’ what their communities should be doing. Instead, communities were given the resources to figure out what they needed to do and then go about doing it.

Charmaine Ruddock, director of Bronx Health REACH, is a coalition of 50 community and faith-based organizations, funded by the Centers for Disease Control’s REACH 2010 Initiative to address racial and ethnic health disparities.

Happy Valentine (Not So Much) from President Obama

A week ago on Valentine’s Day REACH communities across the country received the kind of Valentine’s Day gift that had no love behind it.  Included in the President’s proposed budget for FY12 was the defunding of the 12 year REACH program. REACH which stands for Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health is CDC’s cornerstone effort to address the stubborn and persistent gap between the health outcomes of whites and those of people of color be they Asian/Pacific Islanders, Blacks, Hispanics, Alaska Natives and American Indians.  The genius of this effort is that in 1999 CDC took the unprecedented approach that the communities most affected by disparities should take the lead in addressing their disparities.  By all accounts this was a major departure in public health.  Heretofore, health disparities was something studied and researched with papers written and academic treatises produced but not much done in terms of addressing them in the local context where there were occurring and definitely not with a community based participatory approach. Enter REACH.  In 1999, under the leadership of the then head of CDC, Dr.David Saatcher grants were made to 36 communities.  Their mandate was to convene coalitions made up of people who work, worship, and live in the community –residents, healthcare providers, academic institutions, faith-based organizations, public health departments, elected officials, business people etc. The Coalitions first task was to put together a community action plan to address the prevailing disparity and its underlying contributing factors in their community.  This was no knight in shining armor riding in on a white horse telling ‘those people’ what their communities should be doing. Instead, communities were given the resources to figure out what they needed to do and then go about doing it.

Mama Grizzlies, “Big” Bosom question the IRS & First Lady on breastfeeding

Barbara Glickstein is the Co-director of CHMP.

The Center for Health, Media and Policy (CHMP) recognizes that the public relies on the media to support decision making about their health – whether it’s promoting healthy behaviors or supporting healthy public policies. We are guided in our efforts by a stellar team including CHMP’s National Advisory Council member, Gary Schwitzer, who is publisher of the website HealthNewsReview.org, where reviewers grade daily health news reporting by major U.S. news organizations for “accuracy, balance and completeness”. The public’s ability to sift through the volume of information available is daunting and growing every day – I know because I find it daunting myself and check this site regularly. I recommend you do too.

So this week, when the IRS and First Lady Obama stepped forward with actions and words supporting breastfeeding, I followed the media coverage unfold and think it presents a good case study underscoring how critical CHMP’s work is.

In Danielle Friedman’s Daily Beast article, “Michelle Obama has officially endorsed breastfeeding, and her Tea Party critics are slamming her for it. But even as they score political points, are they helping her cause?” she reports on the range of reactions the media reported on nationally to the IRS announcement that breast pumps can be paid for with pre-tax Flexible Spending Accounts or deducted as a medical expense if her end-of-year total out-of-pocket medical costs add up to more than 7.5 percent of her income.

Included in her article she highlighted something new to me and I wonder if this is new news for you too – the Affordable Care Act passed last year included a  provision that  – “the health-care bill requires some employers to give nursing mothers break time and a designated place to pump.”

She reminds her readers that in January “the surgeon general’s office issued a “Call to Action to Support Breastfeeding,” outlining steps families, clinicians, and employers can take.”

Ms. Friedman asks if the response by those who oppose these actions, which she quotes in her article, have inadvertently helped spread a positive message on breastfeeding or hurt the cause. What’s your take?

Barbara Glickstein is the Co-director of CHMP. [caption

Going Wireless: Will Our Health Care System Get the Network it Needs?

William M. Silberg, Senior Fellow & Chair of CHMP Advisory Board. Bill Silberg is a strategic publishing and communications consultant

You can’t click a mouse or tap a smartphone these days without hitting the latest report on how high-speed broadband technology is on the verge of turning the health care system into the highly efficient engine of research and healing we all know it can be.

Some of this is market hype, of course, but there’s clearly real movement as well. Investors, entrepreneurs and established companies from tech firms to insurers are indeed pouring tons of money into the “mHealth” space. The smartphone medical apps market is estimated to have topped $84 million last year, and some analysts think the number of smartphone medical app users will hit a half-billion world-wide by 2015.

Hopefully, the US will have the high-speed broadband platform it needs to accommodate this potentially transformative mHealth trend. One clue will be the reception afforded President Obama’s recently detailed plan to spend almost $11 billion on a high-speed, wireless public-safety network designed to allow first responders and health professionals to transmit critical data, images and video during emergency situations. The plan, part of Obama’s efforts to make high-speed wireless available to at least 98% of Americans, also includes $3 billion for mobile Internet support of health, education and energy apps.

Obama, whose administration has put billions into efforts to speed clinician adoption of electronic medical records, hopped into the mHealth space during his State of the Union address, when he mentioned wireless patient-physician video chats. With the broadband initiative, he’s staking even more of a claim in this area, obviously part of his missive that this kind of infrastructure support is vital if the US is to “win the future” in an increasingly competitive global marketplace.

Will this initiative survive intact given the new slash-and-burn atmosphere in Washington? Well, the good news, at least as the White House tells it, is that the high-speed wireless proposal won’t cost the taxpayers anything, since the administration would raise almost $28 billion for the initiative by auctioning off a piece of the wireless spectrum now used by TV stations and government agencies. In fact, according to the White House, that would leave a nearly $10 billion federal deficit-reducing surplus.

Sounds like a winner, right? One sincerely hopes so, given the numerous examples of how first responders and health professionals routinely express frustration with the antiquated systems that must often use to get their jobs done. But it’s hardly a slam dunk. As a recent Washington Post piece notes, “the plan is ambitious and complicated and relies heavily on the participation of cautious television broadcasters who are loath to easily give up their greatest asset — spectrum.”

 

It’s not clear how much broadcasters would get for giving up airwaves in voluntary “incentive auctions,” the Post adds. It quotes an industry trade group as saying that broadcasters aren’t necessarily opposed to the plan; they just want more details on what they can expect in exchange for giving up what could be a highly lucrative piece of the ether just at a time when it could start to generate substantial revenue.

And lest the plan would get away without political tinkering, the Post reminds us that even as Obama was unveiling it in northern Michigan, the House Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing on oversight of recent funding for broadband programs, which totaled more than $7 billion in grants to rural areas through the stimulus program. “Before we target any more of our scarce taxpayer dollars for broadband, it is critical to examine whether the money already being spent is having an impact, as well as how we can minimize waste, fraud and abuse,” the Post quoted committee chair Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) as saying.

As they say in the business, stay tuned.

William M. Silberg, Senior Fellow & Chair