- IN THE NEWS
- SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS
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- RESOURCES
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IN THE NEWS
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More than 5 years after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, health reform is entering a critical new phase. The health system is strained by increasing demand and unsustainable costs. Too often, care decisions do not align with patient goals or evidence of effectiveness, and Americans experience untenable disparities in health and access to care. At the same time, new technologies and big data are spurring advances in medical science and the practice of care, including precision medicine. Patients are increasingly empowered to take an active role in their health, and community innovators are designing new models that could revolutionize the delivery of care. Increasing emphasis is placed on population health, wellness and prevention. These are the unprecedented challenges - and extraordinary opportunities - the new presidential administration must weigh as it charts the next steps for health reform in the United States.
Source: National Academy of Medicine, March 2017
The report identifies consensus challenges and barriers to addressing social determinants of health, proposes a variety of responses and solutions, and focuses in particular on the role of academic health centers working in collaboration with other stakeholders. Because the social determinants of health play such an important role in overall health and well-being, this report serves to reaffirm AAHC's commitment to enhancing the ability of academic health centers to respond to these critical factors in their education, research, and clinical programs.
SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS
Longitudinal Associations Between Ambient Air Pollution with Insulin Sensitivity, β-Cell Function, and Adiposity in Los Angeles Latino Children
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RESOURCES
500 Cities: Local data for better health
 The 500 Cities project is a collaboration between CDC, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the CDC Foundation. The purpose of the 500 Cities Project is to provide city- and census tract-level small area estimates for chronic disease risk factors, health outcomes, and clinical preventive service use for the largest 500 cities in the United States.
This NEW interactive website launched March 2017 provides the ability to retrieve, visualize, and explore uniformly-defined city and census-tract-level data.
What makes data from 500 Cities special?
500 Cities data complements existing data sources by providing information on unhealthy behaviors, health outcomes and prevention practices in small geographic areas. For example, public health officials can use the following data sets to paint a more complete picture of the health of their regions:
- The annual County Health Rankings measures county level health factors (obesity, smoking, food access, income, housing etc.) for all counties in the U.S. The site also includes a Roadmaps to Health Action Centersection that provide guidance and tools to help communities take action.
- America's Health Rankings, a project of the American Public Health Association, the United Health Foundation and Partnership for Prevention is a source for trends in nationwide public health and state-by-state rankings using 34 measures of behaviors, community and environment, policies, and clinical care data.
- VCU Life Expectancy Maps illustrate how opportunities to lead a long and healthy life vary dramatically by neighborhood. In some cases, life expectancy can differ by as much as 20 years in neighborhoods only about five miles apart from one another. The maps help raise awareness of factors that shape health and spur discussion and action on a complex web of issues that influence health.
While these data sets provide quick access to health issues affecting local populations, the 500 Cities Project provides a granular level of detail that will help identify key or emerging health problems. This local data can help policymakers and community leaders identify persistent inequities and direct interventions and funding accordingly.
Source: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation- Culture of Health
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In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health.
Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways.
Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.
Source:
National Academies Press
What if you could get a fuller picture of a child's health and use this information to change the course of that child's life?
You can do both these things through the AAP Screening in Practices Initiative. The Academy is launching a new quality improvement learning collaborative and
Screening Technical Assistance (TA) Center with the goal of increasing rates of early childhood screening, referral and follow-up for developmental milestones, maternal depression and
social determinants of health.
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POLICY
Poverty and Child Health in the United States
Almost half of young children in the United States live in poverty or near poverty. The American Academy of Pediatrics is committed to reducing and ultimately eliminating child poverty in the United States. Poverty and related social determinants of health can lead to adverse health outcomes in childhood and across the life course, negatively affecting physical health, socioemotional development, and educational achievement. The American Academy of Pediatrics advocates for programs and policies that have been shown to improve the quality of life and health outcomes for children and families living in poverty.
With an awareness and understanding of the effects of poverty on children, pediatricians and other pediatric health practitioners in a family-centered medical home can assess the financial stability of families, link families to resources, and coordinate care with community partners. Further research, advocacy, and continuing education will improve the ability of pediatricians to address the social determinants of health when caring for children who live in poverty. Accompanying this policy statement is a technical report that describes current knowledge on child poverty and the mechanisms by which poverty influences the health and well-being of children.
Source: American Academy of Pediatrics
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EVENTS
UAB HEALTH DISPARITIES RESEARCH SYMPOSIUM
The Role of Social Determinants of Population Health
Featuring:
Catarina Kiefe, PhD, MD
Professor and Chair, Department of Quantitative Health Sciences
University of Massachusetts Medical School
Professor and Vice Chair, Department of Quantitative Health Sciences
University of Massachusetts Medical School
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The
Arkansas Coalition for Obesity Prevention (ArCOP) received funding from the University of Alabama at Birmingham
Mid-South Transdisciplinary Collaborative Center (TCC) for Health Disparities Research (UAB Mid-South TCC to implement the
Mayors Mentoring Mayors (3M) project in 2015. This UAB Midsouth TCC grant addressed health disparities impacting obesity in six Midsouth states. The Mid-South TCC has invited ArCOP to present the 3M project, in the second phase of this grant, using a Multi-State approach.
Over the past seven years, ArCOP has identified communities in Arkansas with the most significant changes towards better health are those
communities where t
he mayor is involved. Mayors who have seen the benefits of policy, system and environmental changes first-hand have become some of our strongest champions. Mayors know healthy cities are economically secure cities. Arkansas mayors are excited to share their successes, lessons learned, and best practices with their colleagues across the state.
The Mid-South TCC and ArCOP targeted the geographic areas including Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee to expand the 3M reach across the five additional states using the ArCOP Growing Healthy Community model.
This Multi-State 3M Summit is a collaboration of Mayors, City Elected Officials and their community's team members sharing exciting work of each state's successes, lessons learned, barriers and best practices.
Arkansas Municipal League
301 W 2nd St, North Little Rock, AR 72114
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Click on the icons below to join the Mid-South TCC social media platforms to:
- Receive information on funding opportunities.
- Stay connected with the members of the coalition, and build a larger collaborative network.
- Start discussion groups within the Linkedin platform, and share this eNews on Facebook and Twitter.
- Maximize the impact of your research!
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MID-SOUTH TRANSDISCIPLINARY COLLABORATIVE CENTER FOR HEALTH DISPARITIES RESEARCH
1717 11th Avenue South, Medical Towers 516 I Birmingham, AL 35294-4410, USA
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