health equity
Advancing health equity
Health Affairs Blog, March 5
The March issue of Health Affairs explores various approaches to reducing disparities in health care and analyzes a range of programs designed to advance the goal of health equity.
Don’t miss the article from Glenn Flores, Chief Research Officer at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, on the impact of parent mentoring programs on the uninsured rate for Latino children in Connecticut.
linking care with community
Podcast: When the diagnosis is poverty
Colleen Shaddox, Connecticut Health Investigative Team, March 7
Joanne Goldblum of New Haven is on a mission to get health care clinicians to recognize that poverty may be the underlying cause of their patients’ illnesses and that the best treatment might be as simple as a brown bag of food or a tube of toothpaste. For example, a baby comes to a well child visit in dirty clothes. Clinicians might typically ask: Is the mother too depressed to care for the infant? Goldblum wants the visit to begin with more basic questions: Does Mom have detergent or the money to go to a laundromat?
connecticut
Dwindling oversight heightens concern over medical, mental health care for inmates
Jacqueline Rabe Thomas, The Connecticut Mirror, March 6
Care for the 14,000 inmates the state incarcerates on any given day is slated to undergo significant changes in July when the Department of Correction takes over managing it from UConn Health. However, some involved say changing management won’t necessarily address issues that have led to their concerns. Mental health care is a particular worry because most of the inmates eventually will be released.
affordability
The price they pay
Katie Thomas and Charles Ornstein, The New York Times and ProPublica, March 5
The burden of high drug costs weighs most heavily on the sickest Americans, and this article shares the stories of several who are struggling, as well as insights into the policies behind these issues. One is Saundra Johnson, whose annual income of less than $20,000 makes her unable to afford the 12 medications her doctors have prescribed for congestive heart failure, diabetes and related complications. She is one of the many who finds herself “in between,” as one of her doctors described it, narrowly missing the requirements for assistance but making too little to afford her prescriptions.