State Health and Value Strategies (SHVS), in partnership with Manatt Health, Health Equity Solutions, Georgetown’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms (CHIR), the State Health Access Data Assistance Center (SHADAC), Bailit Health, and GMMB, developed this resource page to serve as an accessible “one-stop” source of health equity information for states. This resource is designed to support states seeking to make coverage and essential services available to all of their residents, regardless of where they live, how much money they make, or discrimination they face. SHVS will update this page frequently with new resources as they become available.
California’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy includes a health equity metric which will be used (along with other metrics) to determine a county’s tier. The purpose of this metric is to ensure California reopens its economy safely by reducing disease transmission in all communities. This document outlines the equity metric and requirements which is effective October 6, 2020.
The M-HEAT is a tool to help measure health insurance marketplace progress and performance toward health equity. It compiles and orders data from two perspectives: the health insurance marketplace andcommunity stakeholders.
As announced on August 28, 2020, the Blueprint for a Safer Economy includes a health equity metric which will be used (along with other metrics) to determine a county’s tier. The purpose of this metric is to ensure California reopens its economy safely by reducing disease transmission in all communities. This document outlines the equity metric and requirements which is effective October 6, 2020.
As states seek to address the social determinants of health and advance health equity, they face longstanding and persistent challenges in collecting complete, accurate, and consistent race, ethnicity and language (REL) data. This expert perspective provides an overview of current REL data collection standards; ideas for increasing completeness in data by engaging the enrollee and enrollment assisters, and modifying enrollment and renewal interface; and provides suggestions for how states could leverage alternative sources of data in order to improve REL data completeness.
CDC released a new study examining the disproportionate impacts of COVID-19 on American Indians and Alaska Natives (AI/AN) in 23 states between January 31 and July 3. The report found:
• The cumulative incidence of laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases among AI/AN was 3.5 times that of non-Hispanic whites
• Compared to whites, a higher percentage of cases among AI/AN individuals were in people under 18 years of age (12.9 percent AI/AN; 4.3 percent white)
• A smaller percentage of cases were among AI/AN individuals who are 65 years or older (12.6 percent AI/AN; 28.6 percent white)
The Committee on Ways and Means Majority at the US House of Representatives authored a report on the stark barriers that communities of color and rural communities face to accessing equitable health care.
Health system leaders and policy makers should take the lead in addressing alarming disparities in COVID-19 deaths.
This expert perspective provides an update on states’ reporting of health equity data and a summary of CARES Act reporting requirements.
Many people in America face segregation, social exclusion, encounters with prejudice, and unequal access and treatment by the health care system, all of which can impact health. Medicaid programs serve a disproportionate share of populations that are negatively impacted by health disparities. This new State Health and Value Strategies (SHVS) issue brief provides examples from a handful of states that have begun the work of identifying, evaluating, and reducing health disparities within their Medicaid managed care programs. Additionally, it offers an approach for other states interested in measuring disparities in health care quality in Medicaid managed care as a step towards achieving health equity, such that all Medicaid managed care enrollees have a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible.
The Governor of New Jersey signed legislation, S2357, requiring hospitals to report demographic data to the Department of Health, including age, ethnicity, gender, and race of individuals who have tested positive for COVID-19, who have died from COVID-19, and who have tried to get testing but have been turned away.
This expert perspective looks in more depth at which states are regularly reporting data that helps shed light on the health equity issues of this crisis. Specifically, the post includes interactive maps that explore the extent to which all 50 states and the District of Columbia are reporting (as of May 28) data breakdowns by age, gender, race, ethnicity, and health care workers for both cases of and deaths from COVID-19.
On Thursday, May 7, State Health and Value Strategies hosted a webinar that reported on how states are tracking the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on vulnerable populations and provided a framework for states to examine their COVID-19 response efforts to yield better outcomes for such populations. As the COVID-19 crisis evolves, it has become increasingly clear that vulnerable populations are disproportionately impacted. Unsurprisingly, these disparately affected groups are the same ones that have long experienced stark health disparities, such as communities of color, low income populations, and those that reside in congregate living facilities (nursing homes, jails, shelters, etc.). During the webinar, technical experts from Health Equity Solutions and SHADAC shared findings from recent SHVS publications.
The Social Interventions Research and Evaluation Network (SIREN) at the University of California San Francisco, is a research organization focused on the intersection of medical and social services. In response to the COVID-19 crisis, SIREN has developed a resource center of sites aggregating data about health equity, policy, and social risk related to the coronavirus and related financial crisis.
This expert perspective reviews the key indicators currently being tracked by states via their COVID-19 dashboards and also provides an overview of “best practices” states can consider when developing or modifying these same COVID-19 dashboards.
State Medicaid programs are increasingly seeking to understand and address social factors that contribute to poor health—such as food insecurity, unstable housing, and a lack of access to social supports—in order to lower costs, improve outcomes for their members, and advance health equity. To inform this work of addressing the social determinants of health (SDOH) and advancing health equity, states and Medicaid officials need data in order to identify priority areas of unmet social and economic needs, execute SDOH initiatives, and monitor and evaluate the impacts of these programs. Increasingly, states are leveraging a broad array of data sources to support efforts to address health equity. While those sources closest to the Medicaid program are the most widely used, each has advantages and disadvantages. This brief focuses on how Medicaid programs can use data from one federal survey, the American Community Survey (ACS), to inform and target interventions that seek to address social determinants of health and advance health equity. This brief also highlights relevant examples from states that use SDOH and health equity measures from the ACS, including which measures and what they are used for.
The fifth webinar in the SHVS Health Equity Through Managed Care Webinar Series profiled the work of one MCO, HealthPartners, in addressing equity issues within its Medicaid line of business. We heard from Brian Lloyd, who manages Health Partners’ organization-wide equity initiative, which includes collecting data to eliminate disparities in care, supporting language access, partnering with communities, and building an organizational understanding of equity, diversity, inclusion, and bias.
The second webinar in the SHVS Health Equity Through Managed Care Webinar Series explored how states can use data collection and measurement to support their efforts to advance health equity in Medicaid managed care.