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INSTITUTE OF MEDICINE OF CHICAGO

  • 11 Nov 2022 4:01 PM | Deborah Hodges (Administrator)

    A new initiative launched Wednesday by the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus Foundation will provide grants and look for solutions to eliminate systemic barriers to equitable healthcare for Black communities across Illinois. [Health News Illinois]

    The effort will include a grant program and a "series of policy think tanks" with public health experts, medical professionals and elected officials, per a statement from the caucus.

    It will build off of the caucus’ healthcare omnibus approved last year and look at further steps policymakers can do to address disparities, said Sen. Mattie Hunter, a Chicago Democrat and one of three legislative and community chairs overseeing the plan.

    Other members include Rep. Camille Lilly, D-Chicago, and Dr. Anthony Williams, a staff scientist at the University of Chicago and co-founder and chief scientific officer of Circulogix, a liquid biopsy company.

    The foundation plans to offer $5,000 grants to 11 Black students in Illinois who have completed a medical degree and are working as medical providers or practicing in a medical residency program.

    “The (foundation), through this … programming, aims to position itself as a thoughtful leader to achieve inclusive solutions for the concerns that are plaguing Black Illinoisans culminating in synergistic policy development that will improve the quality of life for all,” said Tiffany Hightower, executive director of the foundation.

    Note: Ms. Hightower is a Fellow of IOMC. 

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  • 10 Nov 2022 6:21 PM | Deborah Hodges (Administrator)

    -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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  • 9 Nov 2022 12:29 PM | Deborah Hodges (Administrator)

     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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  • 8 Nov 2022 5:49 PM | Deborah Hodges (Administrator)

    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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  • 7 Nov 2022 6:14 PM | Deborah Hodges (Administrator)

    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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  • 4 Nov 2022 1:22 PM | Deborah Hodges (Administrator)

    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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  • 3 Nov 2022 7:48 AM | Deborah Hodges (Administrator)

    The cookie-cutter approach and lack of convenient care options make it hard for some pregnant people, particularly low-income pregnant people of color, to justify prenatal care access, a trend that researchers said might drive racial health disparities. [PatientEngagementHIT]

    Understanding patient needs, like more personalized prenatal care access and SDoH screening, will be essential to creating care models targeting racial maternal health disparities. 

    Prenatal care should be more tailored to the individual and include care that addresses social determinants of health, according to a qualitative study assessing viewpoints from pregnant people of color.

    Racial maternal health disparities are well documented in the United States, with CDC figures showing that Black pregnant people are around three times more likely to die from childbirth than their White counterparts. And although implicit bias and institutional racism are strong drivers of these disparities, limited access to prenatal care is also influential, according to researchers from the University of Michigan Health.

    But all too often, understanding access to prenatal care leaves out a core component: the perspective of the patient.

    “Although certain populations face significant maternal health care inequities, their views have mostly been absent from prenatal care delivery research and we’ve lacked important information to redesign care to better meet their needs,” lead author Alex Peahl, MD, MSc, an obstetrician-gynecologist at University of Michigan Health Von Voigtlander Women’s Hospital, said in a statement.

    Full article here> 

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  • 2 Nov 2022 6:14 PM | Deborah Hodges (Administrator)

    The American Medical Association (AMA) Code of Ethics urges physicians to "advocate for social, economic, educational, and political changes that ameliorate suffering and contribute to human well-being." [Medscape] 

    But how achievable is that level of physician activism in today's highly divisive US society? The differing attitudes among doctors, and how those attitudes shape actions taken or avoided, are shown in the Medscape Physicians' Views on Racial Disparities Issues Report 2022.

    Survey respondents and commenters on the report expressed opinions that often sharply differed about the impact of racial disparities, how they influence delivery of patient care, and how they affect healthcare providers and staff.

    How Dialed Into Racism Are Doctors?

    Medscape surveyed doctors about 10 leading social issues. They ranked racial disparities third in terms of importance, behind healthcare access and substance/opioid abuse. Non-White survey respondents ranked racial disparities as an important issue somewhat more frequently than their White peers did.

    "Even in extremely reputable professions like medicine, people are facing racism," one pediatrician respondent wrote. A family medicine physician respondent asserted: "We in medicine need to do better. I encourage insight about ourselves to learn about how to rectify injustice."

    But other doctors felt certain social issues like racial disparities are disconnected from their professional duties. One commenter opined, "This topic is simply not our job as a physician. Keep your eye on the ball."

    Full article here> 

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  • 1 Nov 2022 11:51 AM | Deborah Hodges (Administrator)

    Adults with hypertension saw a small, but consequential, rise in their blood pressure levels during the first eight months of the COVID-19 pandemic, while the number of times they had their blood pressure measured dropped significantly, according to a study supported by the National Institutes of Health.   [NIH]

    The findings, which appear today in the journal Hypertension, represent one of the most extensive looks at blood pressure trends during the early months of the pandemic. Using data from three large U.S. healthcare systems, the findings add to growing evidence that blood pressure control worsened in people with hypertension during this period.

    Still, the problem was not nearly as dire as they expected, possibly due to the rapid adoption of telemedicine and home blood pressure monitoring. The successful use of these alternatives to in-person office visits offers a reason to be optimistic about improving blood pressure control in future disasters and public health emergencies, according to the researchers.

    Hypertension, or high blood pressure, affects over 1 billion people worldwide. Researchers have known for some time that poor blood pressure control is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, including heart attack and stroke, as well as a risk factor for more severe COVID-19 disease. Yet, blood pressure control remains an ongoing challenge: Only about 1 in 4 U.S. adults with hypertension have their condition under control, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(link is external). The COVID-19 pandemic saw widespread stay-at-home orders and lockdowns, prompting some researchers to explore its impact on these patients.

    In the current study – funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of NIH – researchers looked at the electronic data records of 137,593 adults with hypertension and compared blood pressure outcomes before the pandemic (August 2018 through January 2020) with those during the peak of the pandemic (April 2020 through January 2021). The data came from three large health systems: Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles; Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City; and Ochsner Health in New Orleans. The average age of the patients was 66 years, and 57% were female and 30% were black.

    The researchers discovered first that the number of blood pressure measurements patients had taken declined significantly in the first three months of the pandemic — by as much as 90% compared to before the pandemic. While these measurements gradually ticked up as the months passed, the total number of readings at the end of the study period remained below pre-pandemic levels. The researchers believe this was partly because of cancellations or postponements of face-to-face office visits.

    Full article here> 

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  • 31 Oct 2022 3:11 PM | Deborah Hodges (Administrator)

    Consumers can start checking out Affordable Care Act marketplace health plans ahead of the 2023 open enrollment season, the Biden Administration announced.

    “All families have the right to quality, affordable health care coverage. During this Open Enrollment period, consumers will have access to a variety of quality plan options at an affordable price.  We encourage consumers to visit HealthCare.gov and their state-based Marketplaces to preview plans and premiums now so that they’re ready to make selections when Open Enrollment begins on November 1,” said CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure.

    CMS reported that 13 million Americans save on average $800 per year on health insurance. Through American Rescue Plan Act subsidies which have been extended for the next three years due to the Inflation Reduction Act, most consumers have access to health plans with a monthly premium of $10 or less.

    Full article here>

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