Guest presenters: Kalahn Taylor-Clark from the Engelberg Center for Healthcare Reform, Rita Carreon from America’s Health Insurance Plans, and Sarah Scholle from the NCQA will present and lead a discussion on the collection of racial and ethnic data by health plans.

We will also be discussing the current political scene regarding disaggregated data collection and the IOM’s new report on Race, Ethnicity, and Language Data: Standardization for Health Care Quality Improvement (release date 08/31/09). More information at  <http://www.iom.edu/CMS/3809/61110/72560.aspx>

Date: Friday, September 18, 2009
Time: Noon – 2pm EST
Location: America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP)
601 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
South Building, Suite 500
Washington, DC 20004
Conference Room 5B

We are located between 6th and 7th Street and close to the Green/Yellow Line – Archives/Navy Memorial/Penn Quarter or Red Line – Gallery Place/Chinatown or Judiciary Square

Conference-calling will still be available.

To RSVP, please email: alee@outofmany1.org

Date: Monday, July 27, 2009
Time: Noon – 2pm EST
Location: OMO/SHIRE
1776 Massachusetts Ave NW, Suite 615
Washington DC 20036

Conference call in will also be available. Lunch will also be provided.

Please call SHIRE: 202-371-0277 if you need assistance on the day of the meeting.
Email Angela (alee@outofmany1.org) for more information or to RSVP.

Date: Friday, June 26, 2009
Time: Noon – 2pm EST
Location: OMO/SHIRE
1776 Massachusetts Ave NW, Suite 615
Washington DC 20036

Conference call in will also be available.

Lunch will be provided. Please call SHIRE: 202-371-0277 if you need assistance on the day of the meeting. Email Angela (alee@outofmany1.org) for more information or to RSVP.

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

April 28 was a “banner day” for OMO and the Health Data Task Force. Four of our colleagues played key roles at the 2009 Health Braintrust/National Minority Quality Forum Leadership Summit. Dr. Brian Smedley received an award on behalf of the Health Policy Institute at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. He also moderated a session and served as a panelist discussing the Place Matters initiative. Jennifer Ng’andu (National Council of La Raza), Deanna Jang (Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum) and Danielle Delaney (National Council on Urban Indian Health) participated in an afternoon panel on Launching a Health Equity Movement. All three made important contributions, and Deanna spoke specifically on collecting sub-population data as an essential requirement for movement-building. Kudos to all!!!

Also on April 28, OMO was featured as a co-sponsor of a very impressive Congressional exhibition and reception featuring Behavioral and Social Sciences Research at the National Institutes of Health in the Cannon building.  We joined 29 other organizations in providing a forum for 18 NIH entities to present information about their mission, research and funding opportunities. (See below flyer). Jeannette Noltenius assured OMO’s participation and Ruth Perot represented OMO at this event.

Great work!

Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.

Out of Many, One (OMO) is a national multicultural coalition that has been advocating for health equity and parity for communities of color since 2000.  OMO works to assure that every ethnic and racial group, regardless of its size or immigration status, has equal access to health care coverage, access and treatment, and that disparities experienced by these groups are eliminated. OMO premises its goals on an understanding that directly collected, self-reported, and disaggregated data are essential to achieve these purposes, and to develop culturally and linguistically appropriate policies and programs to improve the quality of life, health status and health care outcomes of minority populations.

OMO understands that without data on race, ethnicity, gender, and primary language, public and private health care organizations will not be able to design policies and programs that improve health outcomes for communities of color, which compromise 34% of the nation’s population. The below recommendations are supported by our members and others who are part of a Health Data Task Force (HDTF) that meets monthly in Washington, DC. We are ready to work with you and your organization to incorporate these recommendations into legislation and build community support for these initiatives nationwide.

Please don’t hesitate to contact Ms. Ruth Perot (email: rperot@shireinc.org or call (202) 371-0277) and/or Ms. Jeannette Noltenius (email: jnoltenius@sswdc.com or call (202) 328-1313) if you would like to meet with OMO or HDTF members to clarify and/or discuss our recommendations.

Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.

Date Monday, February 9, 2009
Time: 5:00 PM
Location: Room 100, Keck Building, 500 5th Street NW, Washington DC

Deeana Jang from the Asian & Pacific Islander Health Forum testified on behalf of the OMO Health Data Task Force (HDTF) at a public workshop hosted by the Institute of Medicine’s Subcommittee on Standardized Collection of Race/Ethnicity Data for Healthcare Quality Improvement  and Committee on Future Directions for the National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Reports.

HDTF members Mara Youdelman from the National Health Law Program (NHeLP) and Kalahn Taylor-Clark from the Engelberg Center for Healthcare Reform at the Brookings Institute  also  testified on behalf of their respective organizations.

For more information: Click here

Also available for download are the powerpoint presentations.

Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.

Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.

Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.

“David Baldridge, a champion of Native American elders for two decades, lamented, “It’s seemingly always about the dollars—and America’s political will (or lack of it) to help disadvantaged minorities. All the model programs in the world won’t help if we not willing to fund them.”

Among key issues for Native elders is the lack of long-term care and the need for Washington to fund it, Baldridge says. “There is essentially none in Indian Country” he said. “Less than 20 Indian nursing homes exist, and home and community-based care is very poorly funded.” Baldridge, now on the staff of the Native Diabetes Wellness Program of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in Albuquerque, directed the National Indian Council on Aging for 14 years.

One factor, he said, is rural isolation. Another is low rates of participation by Native American elders in federal initiatives to subsidize low-income elders, such as SSI or several programs under the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Furthermore, Baldridge said, funding for Urban Indian healthcare is far below today’s reality. “About 75 percent of Indians now live off-reservation,” he said. “This population remains amorphous, hard to identify, and often lacks healthcare access unless they return to their home reservation.”

More broadly, though, Baldridge said it is time that federal authorities “mandate the collection, use and dissemination of disaggregated data by race, ethnicity, and language preference.”

He explained that, surprisingly, federal agencies–in particular the Social Security Administration–currently don’t do this.”

Without such data, he stressed, “aging minority populations will remain invisible in the healthcare reform debate. Dollars always follow data. One example is that the National Center for Health Statistics is considering stop collecting ‘enhanced data’ from some areas due to budget considerations.”"

To read the full article, click here.