African Americans, American Indians and other racial and ethnic groups have higher morbidity and mortality rates than white Americans from virtually every disease.
We asked some leading thinkers in California to begin an online discussion about this issue, by considering the following questions:
How can federal health care reform address the societal determinants of health, such as poverty, safety, housing, schools, transportation and access to healthy food and safe parks?
Posts
Health Reform Will Fail
Provocative statement… yes. True…yes. Inevitable…no.
How About Some Really Out-of-the-Box Thinking?
Physical activity is one of the most potent and grossly underutilized tools in our prevention arsenal. The data supporting the effectiveness of modest “doses” of exercise in preventing, managing and, on occasion, even curing a host of chronic disease maladies is overwhelming…
Why Excellent Public Schools Should Be a Top Priority for Public Health
Excellent neighborhood public schools would not only help improve kids’ fitness and educational trajectory, but may also increase parent involvement, provide opportunities for joint use of fitness facilities such as gyms and tracks by community members, increase pedestrian traffic on streets to assist in community policing and increase demand for sidewalk maintenance and streetlight repair…
Don’t Let Us Go Backwards
Throughout this blog series on health disparities, my fellow contributors and I have stressed the importance of looking beyond health coverage in our efforts to address health inequities. And while I still maintain that the solution will not be found in an exam room, the proposed cuts to California’s public coverage programs pose a massive step backwards in our work toward health equity…
Bridging the Work of Prevention and Care
I was… encouraged by the mention of multidisciplinary care teams in the recent position paper by the Senate Finance Committee, “Expanding Health Care Coverage: Proposals to Provide Affordable Coverage to All Americans.” The product of the Committee’s round table discussions on health care reform, this paper focuses on ways to expand coverage and improve the delivery of care…
Prevention - Got Change?
The overwhelming majority of the resources are dedicated to observational studies further defining the problem and its parameters… rather than intervention studies testing solutions, or even qualitative investigations to guide the development of innovative and pragmatic solutions to test…
Our Accent is on the Wrong Syl-ˈla-ble
Health care is a repair shop where we take our bodies when warning lights are flashing. But what makes our bodies break down in the first place, and why is it that some populations seem to break down so much more often than others?
Health Care Inequities: Up Close and Personal
[I]t’s one thing to study the disparities, it’s another to experience them first-hand, to see them in living color. I can’t add much to the thoughts of my erudite colleagues in the health care debate, so let me tell you a story…
Flu Scare Highlights Need for Paid Sick Days as a Health Policy
Whether we are trying to prevent the H1N1 flu, seasonal influenza, or food borne disease outbreaks in restaurants, guaranteeing the right of all workers to earn and use paid sick days is a commonsense public health strategy – for individual workers, their families, and for all Americans…
Achieving Health Equity through Health in All Policies
Health is fundamental to our happiness and productivity, and our approach needs to involve more than just health care. Our well-being is about the neighborhoods we live in, the opportunities we are afforded, and the actions of our government…