Administration Updates

CMS: CMS Approves Five-Year Extension of the New Mexico Turquoise Care Section 1115 Demonstration (7/25) -  CMS approved a five-year extension of New Mexico’s section 1115 demonstration, which will provide Substance Use Disorder (SUD) treatment for eligible individuals residing in an Institution for Mental Diseases (IMD), long-term services and supports through the Community Benefit program, Serious Mental Illness/Serious Emotional Disturbance (SMI/SED) services to enhance access to mental health services, and continuous eligibility for children up to age six. In addition, the state received new authority to provide health-related social needs (HRSN) services to individuals who meet the clinically focused, needs-based criteria of each service and pre-release services for certain eligible incarcerated individuals for up to 90 days immediately prior to the individual’s expected date of release. 

GAO: Estimated Eligibility and Receipt among (7/24) - GAO released a report on how many college students experiencing hunger apply for and receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.

CMS: CMS Cross Cutting Initiative on Oral Health (7/23) - CMS released the inaugural Oral Health Cross-Cutting Initiative Fact Sheet. Overall health and well-being are impacted by oral health, affecting individuals, families, and communities.

CDC: Office of Health Equity Partner Webinar Series: Advancing Health Equity Through Workforce Develop (7/23) - The blog highlights the CDC's Office of Health Equity's partner webinar series, which emphasizes strategies for advancing health equity through the development of a diverse and skilled public health workforce, including addressing workforce shortages and enhancing training opportunities for equity-focused roles.

CMS: Provision of Medicaid and CHIP Services to Incarcerated Youth State Health Official Letter (7/23) - CMS issued a letter to state health officials regarding the availability of certain state plan services for incarcerated youth in Medicaid and CHIP and modification of CHIP eligibility requirements for children who become incarcerated.

ONC Health IT: USCDI v5 and Standards Bulletin Now Available (7/23) - The United States Core Data for Interoperability Version 5 (USCDI v5) is now available! USCDI v5 includes 2 new data classes and 16 new data elements that support improved patient care and advance the Administration’s goals of equity, diversity, and access to health care.

SDoH & Health Equity in the News

Healthcare IT Today: Payers Innovative Approaches to Social Determinants of Health and their Impact on Reducing Healthcare Disparities and Improving Health Outcomes (7/23) - In their efforts to prioritize patient-centered care, organizations must consider SDoH, ensuring equitable access to digital tools aligned with patients' language and means to reduce barriers and improve healthcare outcomes.

Health Affairs: To Advance Health Equity, Make Health Literacy a Priority at the Organizational Level (7/22) - The article emphasizes the critical impact of low health literacy on health outcomes and disparities among vulnerable populations in the United States, underscoring its significant role in healthcare maintenance, prevention, treatment compliance, and cost efficiency, with increasing attention on digital health literacy amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and evolving regulatory frameworks.

Tech Target: Reassessing the Use of Race in Clinical Algorithms (7/17) - Healthcare stakeholders convened at the "Together to Catalyze Change for Racial Equity in Clinical Algorithms" event to discuss the major issue of using race as a biological construct in research and clinical algorithms, highlighting the need for improved scientific rigor, addressing harmful race-based uses in existing algorithms, and incorporating health equity considerations into clinical guidance, as emphasized by presentations and panelists from the Doris Duke Foundation, the Council of Medical Specialty Societies, and the National Academy of Medicine.

Center for Health Care Strategies: Supporting Health Equity Strategic Planning: Lessons from Safety Net Health Plans (7/16) - The article provides lessons from safety-net health plans on how to effectively incorporate health equity into strategic planning to better address disparities and improve care for underserved populations

Health Affairs: Restructuring Medicare Payments To Address Homelessness (7/16) - CMS has integrated SDOH into Medicare policies through initiatives like ICD-10 Z codes, aiming to understand and address non-medical factors affecting health outcomes, with recent rules proposing increased reimbursement for treating homelessness, reflecting CMS's ongoing efforts to incentivize providers to tackle SDOH comprehensively.

Tech Target: Defining the Digital Determinants of Health (7/15) -The concept of digital determinants of health (DDOH), emerging alongside SDOH in healthcare discussions, underscores how individuals' access to and interaction with health information technology can significantly influence their health outcomes and overall well-being, despite lacking a standardized definition as of yet. 

New Research & Reports

Eurek Alert: Study Finds Non-Medical Factors, Including Proximity to a Coal Mine, May Lead to Worse Recover from Stroke (7/22) - Research presented at the SNIS 2024 conference reveals that socioeconomic factors, such as living in coal-mining areas, significantly worsen stroke recovery outcomes despite effective treatments like thrombectomy, underscoring the need for comprehensive care strategies beyond acute treatment to address health disparities.

JAMA: Effect of Cash Benefits on Health Care Utilization and Health (7/22) - In a randomized study, individuals receiving cash benefits had fewer emergency department visits and hospital admissions, along with increased use of outpatient care, suggesting that income support policies can enhance health outcomes and access to care.

NEJM: Plugging Public Health Data into the Health IT Ecosystem to Protect National Health (7/17) - The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted significant challenges in the United States' public health systems, particularly an outdated data ecosystem that impeded timely data sharing between healthcare delivery and public health systems. Despite recent progress in standardizing and connecting public health and healthcare IT systems, further work is needed to enhance interoperability, with ongoing efforts focusing on policy and technology innovations to improve data exchange and address remaining challenges.

NEJM: Pediatric Asthma Surveillance System (PASS): Community-Facing Disease Monitoring for Health Equity (7/17) -The partnership between health care delivery systems and public health entities, exemplified by the Pediatric Asthma Surveillance System (PASS) developed by Parkland Health, Dallas County Health and Human Services, and the Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation, is essential for improving community health equity by leveraging AI/machine learning and social/clinical risk insights to create a comprehensive, community-facing dashboard that predicts pediatric asthma risk and identifies risk disparities, thereby supporting coordinated interventions. 

NEJM: Knocking Down Public Health and Health Care Silos: An Innovative Covid-19 Health Equity Response (7/17) - In Minnesota, disparities in Covid-19 infection rates were stark, with higher incidences among Black and Latine communities compared to non-Hispanic whites, highlighting barriers due to fragmented public health and healthcare systems that hindered equitable testing and vaccination efforts, overcome through collaborative efforts between Saint Paul – Ramsey County Public Health, Fairview Health Services, and local partners to establish accessible, culturally sensitive, and free Covid-19 testing and vaccination clinics across diverse community sites, ultimately underscoring the critical need for integrated and proactive healthcare partnerships in addressing longstanding health disparities exacerbated by the pandemic.

Upcoming Events

Workshop: July 29-30, 2024 - NIH, "Climate Change, Health, and Justice: A Workshop on Community-Engaged Research to Promote Health Equity" | Virtual

Webinar: August 7, 2024 - NIHCM, "Meeting the Health Care Needs of an Aging Population" | Virtual

Webinar: August 21, 2024 - CHCS, "Braiding Funding Streams to Deliver Integrated Care for Medi-Cal Members Under CalAIM" | Virtual

Conference: October 16-18, 2024 - Camden Coalition + UPMC, "Putting Care at the Center 2024" | Pittsburgh, PA