HHS’s National Partnership for Action to End Health Disparities (a project of the Office of Minority Health) recently hosted a conference call announcing a new new initiative focused on reducing health disparities in the U.S. The National Stakeholder Strategy for Achieving Health Equity was developed after engaging communities across the country around the priorities and potential strategies to address health disparities. A complement to the Stakeholder Strategy, the HHS Action Plan to Reduce Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, outlines how HHS is committed to an ongoing effort and evaluation of its policies and programs to reduce disparities. More importantly, in the HHS Action Plan, the Department holds itself accountable for increasing health insurance coverage, improving the quality of care, building data capacity, preventing disease and strengthening cultural competency.
HHS is applauded for launching these new efforts and recognizing key ways in which the Affordable Care Act helps to address them and pointing out that any effort that is focused on addressing health care costs, must address health disparities. Racial and ethnic health minorities are not only less likely to get the preventive care they need, but they are more likely to suffer from health care conditions such as diabetes and asthma that can be better managed with quality care, which they also receive less likely than their White counterparts- all of which contributes to higher cost and less effective care.
Fortunately, as the HHS Action Plan points out, the ACA and CHIPRA included funding and new policy tools to help begin to address these disparities. Some of these include expanding access to affordable health coverage through Medicaid and the new Exchanges, increasing the number of children enrolled in CHIP and Medicaid who have access to dental care, providing grant funding to increase the proportion of people with a usual primary care provider, offering demonstration grants through Medicaid and CHIP to promote better asthma care for racial and ethnic minorities and allocating funding for outreach that is targeted and effective to enroll racial and ethnic minorities into health coverage. The hope is that by holding itself accountable to these goals and strategies, continually evaluating their effectiveness and engaging community partners across the country in the process, that health disparities will be reduced and as a nation we will be healthier overall.
