Addressing maternal health disparities will be a key priority as federal lawmakers return for their final session of the year, two Illinois Congress members said Tuesday. [Health News Illinois]

U.S. Reps. Lauren Underwood, D-Naperville, and Robin Kelly, D-Matteson, told reporters during a virtual event held Tuesday by the advocacy group Protect Our Care that they have spoken to Democratic leadership in the House and Senate about taking up several proposals related to maternal health in its end-of-the-year agenda, including extending postpartum Medicaid coverage from 60 days to one year in all states.

“Now that the election is behind us, it is time to roll up our sleeves and get to work on passing these important priorities in the end-of-the-year package,” Kelly said.

Underwood also renewed calls to pass her maternal health omnibus, which includes investments for community-based organizations, perinatal workforce, improving data collection processes and addressing the social determinants of health.

Tuesday’s press conference comes as the future makeup of the House remains uncertain, with election results continuing to come in. Analysts expect Republicans to retake control of the chamber.

Both Kelly and Underwood said they understood there will be many legislative priorities pushed by their colleagues in the coming weeks, but added that maternal health cannot wait any longer.

A recent report from the Government Accountability Office, requested last year by Underwood, Kelly, and five other representatives, found the maternal death rate for Black women was 68.9 per 100,000 live births in 2021, compared to 44 in 2019. White women saw their death rates rise from 17.9 to 26.1 during that time, while Latinx women’s death rates went from 12.6 to 27.5.

 “These statistics are tragic and unacceptable,” Underwood said Tuesday. “They are an urgent call to action that we have a responsibility to answer.”

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NIH has released Advancing Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias Research for All Populations: Prevent. Diagnose. Treat. Care. This scientific progress report gives a comprehensive overview of advances made in the past year to address the enormous challenges of Alzheimer's and related dementias.
The report highlights NIH-funded progress as we work to achieve optimal prevention, diagnostic, treatment, and care options. 

Download the full 55-page report here>

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Much has changed in healthcare since the 1990s: HIV infection is no longer a presumptive death sentence, minimally invasive and robotic techniques have redefined a variety of surgeries, and telemedicine has greatly expanded access to care. Why then, in the face of such remarkable advancement and change, has the number of doctors the U.S. produces each year not changed enough to meet the evolving needs of our population? The answer is Congress.

Full article here> 

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WHAT’S KNOWN ON THIS SUBJECT: Suicide is the second leading cause of death among children and adolescents.

Mental health related emergency department visits were increasing nationally before the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic.

WHAT THIS STUDY ADDS: We show that there was a continuous increase in emergency department visits coded for suicidal ideation for youth in Illinois, with a spike in visits in 2019 before the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic and a subsequent surge in hospitalizations through 2021.

Visits to an emergency department (ED) for suicidal ideation have spiked in recent years among children and teens in Illinois, a new study found. [American Academy of Pediatrics]

“Rapidly rising hospital use may reflect worsening mental illness and continued difficulty in accessing low cost, high-quality outpatient mental health services,” authors from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine wrote in “Trends in Suicidal Ideation-Related Emergency Department Visits for Youth in Illinois: 2016 — 2021” (Brewer AG, et al. Pediatrics. Nov. 14, 2022).

Full article here> 

Download PDF here> 

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-Medicare solvency, price transparency, telehealth could all be on the agenda, observers say

Challenges ahead for healthcare regardless of who is elected

... Although health policy wasn't a major issue leading up to Tuesday's midterms, "given the fact that the healthcare sector consumes almost 20% of America's [gross domestic product], regardless of whether [Congress wants] to deal with it or not, [they] have to," Robert Moffit, PhD, senior research fellow at the Center for Health and Welfare Policy of the Heritage Foundation, a right-leaning think tank here, said in a phone call Tuesday night. "There are certain issues that are not a matter of choice, but of public necessity, that they have to address." [MedPage Today]

Full article here> https://lnkd.in/gpc9Y92T

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 How do we compare? Arizona was the first state to establish a managed care model that was mandatory across nearly the entire Medicaid population. 

In September 2022, Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS)—Arizona’s Medicaid program—received the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s 2022 Medicaid Innovation Award in “Initiatives to Address Social Determinants of Health” for its Whole Person Care Initiative.

Arizona's Medicaid program took on an innovative role in addressing social determinants of health, particularly in housing.

The Medicaid program’s Whole Person Care Initiative launched in November 2019 in order to address social determinants of health needs among Arizona Medicaid beneficiaries. However, the underlying AHCCCS principles that carried this initiative forward had started years before the initiative’s launch.

“Over the course of the last decade, we have been engaged in a very deliberative effort to integrate care—and when I talk about integrated care in this context, it's really the integration of acute care and behavioral health services,” Jami Snyder, director of AHCCCS, explained to HealthPayerIntelligence.

“We now have a number of providers in our delivery system that offer the full range of physical acute care services and behavioral health services. But as we started to think about what's next on this integration journey, it really became clear to us that if we were going to take sort of a comprehensive approach to integrated care, that we needed to broaden our perspective to include connecting individuals that we serve to needed social services and support. So really taking that whole person care perspective on our integration journey.”

The Whole Person Care Initiative was born out of this effort.

WHAT IS ARIZONA’S WHOLE PERSON CARE INITIATIVE?

The Whole Person Care Initiative focuses on addressing four social determinants of health: providing transitional housing support, offering non-medical transportation support, reducing social isolation through the long-term care system, and creating a statewide closed-loop referral system that enables providers to connect members to social services.

Full article here>

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On Jan. 26, 2021, the Biden Administration launched it Advancing Environmental Justice efforts. It included initiatives on protecting communities from toxic pollution. There are many ideas and efforts - more needs to be done. On Oct. 25, 2022, Amy Lavelley of the Chicago Tribune highlighted in her article 'Feds focus on pollution in the under-resourced communities," and the  USS Lead contamination of soil in East Chicago and the forced evacuation of the West Calumet Housing Complex with more than 1000 people at one time. At this time, the successful resolution is being wrapped up. It involved a low-income population of people of color. 

For more details and to register, visit this page. 

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Construction began Thursday on a pioneering geriatric health center on the Southwest Side.

The new facility from Esperanza Health Center is going up in Brighton Park alongside the group’s facility at 4700 S. California Ave. Construction is expected to take a year. [Sun-Times] 

The center will host one of the state’s first Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly initiatives. Known as PACE, the federal program is designed to help seniors stay in their homes longer.

The program will operate on the first floor. Next to its standard examining rooms, there will be a cafe and areas for activities such as music, arts and crafts and yoga.

“The idea is not to have patients come in just when they need a doctor’s appointment but spend a few days there every week, building relationships,” said Heidi Ortolaza-Alvear, vice president of strategy and business development for Esperanza.

Full story here> 

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Some of the successful innovations and ideas put into place to battle the COVID-19 pandemic are now being put to good use on other public health work. [The Nation's Health-APHA]

To combat the global outbreak, agencies rapidly trained community health workers, partnered with nontraditional organizations and turned to novel mechanisms for outreach and health delivery. Those strategies are now being adopted for public health work on substance use, disease surveillance and more.

In southeast Michigan, for example, a health care unit working to reach people struggling with addiction found that combining its services with COVID-19 work helped open doors and break down stigma.

Founded in southeast Michigan in February 2020, the Recovery Mobile Clinic planned to focus on drug and alcohol addiction treatment. But the pandemic struck a month later, causing it to reconfigure its offerings.

Full article here>

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