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.
A report from Families USA discusses how states can adopt and expand three powerful maternal health interventions to reverse recent trends: establishing or expanding coverage toward a universal doula benefit, covering all midwives, and scaling up group prenatal care. These policies are particularly impactful because they combat significant drivers of poor maternal health outcomes, namely a lack of centering patient interests and respect, growing maternity care deserts, complications from c-sections, and postpartum depression and other mental health conditions.
This fact sheet examines why Medicaid is important for communities experiencing health inequities and how they would be harmed by Medicaid funding caps.
Governor Phil Murphy and Chief Innovation Officer Beth Simone Noveck announced the launch of Transgender.NJ.gov—a new, one-stop hub designed to aid New Jersey’s transgender and non-binary community in finding information about essential programs and services. The website’s initial version contains information such as how to change a name, acquire legal assistance, obtain mental health and medical support, learn about rights and legal protections, and more. The website has launched as a beta version, allowing it to be continually updated and enhanced based on feedback from New Jerseyans and community stakeholders who use the site.
A new toolkit produced by the NORC Walsh Center for Rural Health Analysis in collaboration with the Rural Health Information Hub (RHIhub) compiles evidence-based frameworks and promising strategies and resources to support organizations working toward health equity in rural communities across the United States. The modules in the toolkit contain information and resources focused on developing, implementing, evaluating, and sustaining rural programs that focus on health equity.
Equity Changemakers Institute (Changemakers), led by the Center for Health Care Strategies (CHCS), is a 10-month leadership development program to bolster the capacity of public sector leaders who have significant oversight over agency efforts to advance health equity. Changemakers aims to support these leaders in cultivating the skills to drive transformational change and positively impact the health of those who live in their states/territories.
Apolitical is launching a new fellowship for state officials who are looking to apply a gender lens to their work and learn from global approaches to advancing gender equity. The fellowship is a nine-week program that will run from May 9, 2022 to July 8, 2022, with an estimated time commitment of one to two hours a week. The fellowship is both for those already working to advance gender equity and also those who are new to the area. State officials (as well as officials working at the federal and local level) from a variety of sectors (e.g. public health, housing, transportation, etc.) are encouraged to apply.
State Health and Value Strategies, in partnership with Health Equity Solutions, created the Health Equity Language Guide for State Officials which is comprised of three tools to help state officials with the language they use to discuss and write about race and health equity. The Guide includes definitions and explanations of words and phrases, how to think about their usage, and examples of how they might be applied.
Critical conversations about health equity can be productive when there is a shared and agreed-upon language amongst Medicaid agencies. In this episode of the Medicaid Leadership Exchange podcast, Tekisha Everette, executive director, Health Equity Solutions, Lisa Lee, commissioner, at the Kentucky Department of Medicaid Services, and Jim Jones, Medicaid Director, at the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, explore the importance of finding common ground within an agency on equity-related terminology and creating a “brave space” to have conversations about equity.
Longstanding racial and ethnic injustices contribute to disparities in vaccination rates among historically marginalized populations. We are building equity into every aspect of vaccine distribution in order to close the vaccination gap between white populations and Black/African American, Hispanic/Latinx, and American Indian populations in North Carolina.
The Office of Health Equity seeks to acknowledge systemic racism and the social determinants of health to eliminate disparities by addressing and promoting health equity among all people in every community in New Mexico. The Office of Health Equity strives to provide equitable health opportunities by building relationships with communities, establishing collaborations with care providers and forging partnerships with stakeholders to provide quality service in a culturally and linguistically appropriate manner. These measures focus on ensuring all New Mexicans, especially in rural and under-served areas and borderlands, have increased opportunities to be healthy and promote the public health mission of the New Mexico Department of Health.
The purpose of this report is to highlight existing health disparities by race/ethnicity in Nevada, with a focus upon the most current data available. The race/ethnic groups represented in this report are White-non-Hispanic, Black-non-Hispanic, American Indian/Alaskan Native (AI/AN) -non-Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander (API) -non-Hispanic, and Hispanic. Racial and ethnic minorities are disproportionately affected by health problems and disease in Nevada and throughout the nation. This report is intended to present current and available data, from the state of Nevada, broken down by race/ethnicity and region, in order to inform health professionals, policy makers, community members, and researchers about existing disparities among Nevada’s population.
We encourage dissemination of these strategies to improve health outcomes for racial and ethnic minorities. Our goal is to share material included in the literature and promote effective interventions. We hope you will review the findings included in this report and consider them when you are developing programs, issuing request for proposals, and determining the types of endeavors to fund. We are committed to sharing research findings and evaluation results as it pertains to improving health and social outcomes for racial and ethnic populations and encourage dissemination of this information widely.
In an effort to provide common language, the Office of Health Equity has compiled a list of terms relevant to the work and movement to advance equity. Take note that evolving language is a positive sign in social justice movements. To that end, this list will be modified on an ongoing basis.
Developed in partnership with community leaders, chief equity officers, policymakers, economic development practitioners, research and policy organizations, and philanthropic partners, 10 Priorities for Advancing Racial Equity Through the American Rescue Plan: A Guide for City and County Policymakers suggests municipal strategies for deploying ARP funds equitably, efficiently, and strategically. Additionally, the guide lays out a framework for equitable decision-making around ARP spending and investments with prompts that local leaders can use to not only ask hard questions around racial equity, but also seek to address them.
CORE creates training, tools, and processes for local officials, staff, and the community to intentionally identify and disrupt implicit biases and systemic inequities in policymaking.
A new Health Affairs blog post authored by Dr. Nathan Chomilo, Medical Director for the State of Minnesota’s Medicaid program and a practicing pediatrician and an internal medicine hospitalist with Park Nicollet Health Services/HealthPartners, highlights how racial equity can be built into research and policy and why this is important step as states and policymakers seek to dismantle structure racism in the health care system. Dr. Chomilo notes several examples of how stakeholders can assess research and policy for racial equity at the start. These examples include requiring a racial equity assessment at the start of the development of research proposals aimed at answering policy questions to help ensure investigators have, at the very least, stopped to ask how their work may or may not contribute to structural racism or advance racial justice and improving and standardizing ways to collect race, ethnicity, and language demographic data for not only public payers such as Medicare and Medicaid but all health insurers, social safety-net programs, and education systems.
This infographic explores the history of racial bias and discrimination in health care and during the pandemic, and highlights strategies to address systemic racism and improve health outcomes.
Public health policies have catalyzed major health improvements for people living in the United States. But without enforcement — that is, a means of incentivizing compliance — these policies are less likely to produce their intended effects. Equitable enforcement is a process of ensuring compliance with law and policy that considers and minimizes harms to people affected by health inequities.
By posing a series of questions to consider when drafting, implementing, and enforcing a policy, ChangeLab Solutions’ resource helps policymakers, advocates, and enforcement officials explore (1) the equity implications of traditional public health enforcement tools, and (2) strategies to avoid unintended negative consequences when enforcing violations of the law. Equitable Enforcement to Achieve Health Equity also discusses best practices in design and development of enforcement provisions to help avoid inequitable impacts and promote community health.
An analysis of structural racism within the Medicaid program, and how Medicaid policies have failed to resolve racial health disparities throughout the program’s history.
A report designed to increase consensus around meaning of health equity
On Wednesday, July 22, State Health and Value Strategies hosted part II of the Preparing for OEP 2021 webinar series that provided a deep dive into effective strategies to consider as states design their outreach and education campaigns for OEP 2021 in a shifting health care environment. Presenters from GMMB explored how the impacts of COVID-19 should inform the marketplace’s tactical campaign approaches for virtual outreach and partnership engagement, digital and social platform usage, and paid advertising and earned media. Participants also heard insights from several state officials from state-based marketplaces along the way. Topics for discussion included coordinating with state agencies, engaging micro-influencers, leveraging social media live streams, hosting virtual enrollment events, developing advertising buys, and considering new earned media hooks. This webinar included a question and answer session during which webinar participants can pose their questions to the experts on the line.
Governor Mike DeWine formed the COVID-19 Minority Health Strike Force on April 20, 2020, in response to the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on minorities in Ohio. The strike force contracted with the Health Policy Institute of Ohio (HPIO) to develop this “COVID-19 Ohio Minority Health Strike Force Blueprint.”
This brief describes health equity principles for states as they design and implement their responses.
This report outlines three guiding principles for state policymakers in their equity efforts.
The state of Virginia has formed a Health Equity Work Group that is intentionally embedded into the state’s Uniform Command center addressing COVID-19. Both the Work Group and the Taskforce meet on a regular basis and work to apply a health equity lens to each phase of the state’s response, ranging from preparedness to mitigation to recovery.
Early evidence suggests there are health disparities based on race, gender, and geography in both the contraction of COVID-19 and deaths related to the virus. People of color and those who live in urban centers are faring worse from this pandemic. These higher rates of illness and death are rooted in longstanding, structural inequities in our country. While these inequities cannot be fixed overnight, states can begin to foster a more equitable and just COVID-19 response, relief, and recovery effort by employing a few key guidelines. This expert perspective poses a series of questions states can use to inform immediate actions to strengthen their initial responses and lay the foundation for broader reforms to advance health equity.
A follow-up story on a webinar, Pursuing Data on COVID-19: The Health Inequity Multiplier
The second edition of the Health Equity Guide for Public Health Practitioners and Partners is intended to support practitioners and partners engagement in multifaceted approaches to addressing health equity.
The first webinar in the SHVS Health Equity Through Managed Care Series series reviewed the foundational principles of health equity, barriers to its realization and the impact of health disparities.
The third webinar in the SHVS Health Equity Through Managed Care Webinar Series identified evidence-based interventions that states can use to address disparities in their Medicaid managed care programs.
A report which gives some practical suggestions for public health departments wanting to become equity focused