Health News Roundup

Week of February 26, 2018

HEALTH EQUITY

Efforts aimed at boosting diversity in healthcare leadership fail to make progress
Shelby Livingston, Modern Healthcare, February 24
These are a few of the truths shared recently among professionals getting their master’s degrees in health administration at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Black professionals who hope to reach administrative positions in hospital systems know to keep their mouths shut when it comes to issues of diversity, inclusion and race. Speak out, and they risk being branded angry or difficult, labels that stick once assigned. Better to have a silent seat at the table, than no seat at all.

FEDERAL HEALTH REFORM

Red and blue states move further apart on health policy
Stephanie Armour, The Wall Street Journal, February 28
Democratic and Republican states are moving in opposite directions on health policy, leaving Americans with starkly divergent options for care depending on where they live. As a result, the health-care options in any given state are likely to depend on which party controls the statehouse. That dictates access, cost and coverage, particularly for the roughly 17 million people nationwide who buy their own insurance and the 29 million people who lack it entirely.

CONNECTICUT

School-based health centers facing cuts under governor’s proposed budget
Sandra Gomez-Aceves, Hartford Courant, February 26
Despite their popularity, school-based health centers face a 10 percent cut in funding under Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s proposed budget. That would reduce funding to $9.9 million for 93 clinics, less than the amount the state spent in 2010, when there were only 74 school-based health centers.

FIRST PERSON

OP-ED: There’s more than one side to Asian disaggregation debate
Theanvy Kuoch, CT News Junkie, February 26
Southeast Asian Americans are among the many subgroups that disappear under the pan-ethnic label of “Asians.” The failure to disaggregate race, ethnicity, and language data means that the problems of smaller groups such as Southeast Asian Americans are never detected, addressed, or solved.