Special thanks to Darlene Butts at Ke Ali`i Maka`ainana Hawaiian Civic Club for sharing. Please see below for the entire press release:

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PRESS RELEASE
Contact: Diane Swanbrow
swanbrow@umich.edu
734-647-9069
University of Michigan

Native Hawaiians: Vulnerability to early death at all ages

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Throughout their lives, Native Hawaiians have higher risks of death than white Americans, according to a University of Michigan study.

The research is the first known study to assess mortality patterns among Native Hawaiians at the national level, including those living outside the state of Hawaii.

The study is published in the November 2010 issue of the American Journal of Public Health, online Sept. 16. It was funded by the National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities, part of the National Institutes of Health.

“Native Hawaiians are far more likely than whites to suffer early death,” said demographer Sela Panapasa, an assistant research scientist at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR) and lead author of the article. “Like Black Americans, they are also much more likely than whites to die in mid- and later-life.”

Based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics, the study shows that Native Hawaiian infants less than one year old and young people between the ages of 15 and 34 are particularly vulnerable to early death compared with corresponding age groups of white Americans.

“We also found that older Native Hawaiians have higher expected death rates than either Blacks or whites age 65 and over, suggesting that relatively fewer of this group have benefited from the increased longevity enjoyed by the rest of the nation,” said Panapasa, who is a Pacific Islander of Polynesian heritage.

“These results support the idea that renewed efforts are needed to better understand the specific causes and risk factors of increased mortality among Native Hawaiians and other high risk minority populations, including Pacific Islanders, Southeast Asians, Native Americans, and Alaskan Natives,” Panapasa said. “They should also prompt further investigation into the precursors of premature mortality among Native Hawaiians, including access to health care and prenatal care, socioeconomic status, and the impact of colonization, oppression and other social determinants on health outcomes.”

Panapasa’s co-authors are Marjorie Mau of the University of Hawaii, David Williams of Harvard University, and James McNally of U-M’s ISR.

Pacific Islanders in the United States are a distinct and rapidly growing population, Panapasa noted. Based on the 2000 U.S. Census, there were 874,000 Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders in the U.S. Native Hawaiians represent the largest sector (46 percent) of this population.

Until 1996, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders were aggregated with the larger U.S. Asian population. “Because of their relatively small numbers, their social, economic, and health status has been chronically under-represented in national surveys and distinctive patterns have been missed,” Panapasa said.

“As the U.S. becomes increasingly diverse both racially and ethnically, this type of analysis allows for new insights into the underpinnings of differences in morbidity and mortality,” Panapasa said. “It offers an opportunity to identify how best to reduce health concerns and disparities in racially diverse populations.”

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Panapasa is currently conducting a broader study of Pacific Islander American health, based on a random sample of Tongan and Samoan households in California. The study is being funded by the Asian Pacific Islander American Health Forum (APIAHF).

Established in 1949, the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR) is the world’s largest academic social science survey and research organization, and a world leader in developing and applying social science methodology, and in educating researchers and students from around the world. ISR conducts some of the most widely-cited studies in the nation, including the Thomson Reuters/ University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers, the American National Election Studies, the Monitoring the Future Study, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the Health and Retirement Study, the Columbia County Longitudinal Study and the National Survey of Black Americans. ISR researchers also collaborate with social scientists in more than 60 nations on the World Values Surveys and other projects, and the Institute has established formal ties with universities in Poland, China, and South Africa. ISR is also home to the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), the world’s largest digital social science data archive. Visit the ISR Web site at http://www.isr.umich.edu/ for more information.

NHMA 14th Annual Conference

“Health Care Transformation to Improve Prevention and Health Promotion for the Hispanic Community”

Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, Washington, DC

March 25-28, 2010.

Join Hispanic physicians, medical students, nurses, policymakers, and healthcare industry representatives at our annual conference. This year, NHMA celebrates its 14^th Conference with partners from the Federal and State governments and the private sector. The conference brings together experts from across the nation to share their experience in eliminating health disparities for Hispanics.

CME accreditation will be provided.

Hispanics have become the largest ethnic group in the United States and there is a great need to understand how to deliver culturally competent health care services to them. Learn from experts from across the country on how to enhance academic programs, community-based research, medical practices, and health policies targeting Hispanics.

Please read individual chapters and take some time to add your voice to the thousands of concerned voices from around the United States. The link is http://www.minorityhealth.hhs.gov/npa/templates/browse.aspx?lvl=1&lvlID=31

If you have any questions, please contact Ms. Rochelle Rollins, PhD, Director, Division of Policy and Data, Office of Minority Health, at Rochelle.Rollins@hhs.gov or call 240-453-8222.

The conference will be held October 18-21, 2010 in Baltimore, MD. The theme for the conference is “Improving health care for culturally diverse populations: A new place on the national health agenda.” They are currently requesting presentation proposals for this nationally acclaimed conference, which attracts over 600 participants every two years.

Health care professionals, community representatives, advocates, policymakers, researchers and others from the U.S. and around the world can submit brief proposals on good practices and innovative approaches related to the following thematic categories: language access, culturally competent care/disparity reduction, cultural competence/disparity reduction education and training, organizational cultural competence, policy, and research.

Proposals are due February 1, 2010. Full details on the Call for Proposals is available at www.diversityrxconference.org/proposals.

Below is the introduction. You can download the entire report here: http://www.jointcenter.org/hpi/sites/all/files/raceethnicityandhealthcarereform.pdf

Health care reform proposals before Congress offer potential for great progress in improving health care affordability, access and quality for all Americans—an opportunity not seen for decades. Little discussed, however, is that major provisions are likely to have a significant impact on minorities as they present opportunities to redress longstanding inequities. Moreover, the bills which have emerged from House and Senate committees explicitly recognize the need to reduce disparities; each includes provisions intended to support initiatives targeting racial and ethnic minorities and language access services. While both leading bills offer solutions to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in health, each one differs in the level of its commitment and approach.

This issue brief identifies, analyzes and compares provisions which explicitly address the health and health care needs of racial and ethnic minorities within the two leading Congressional health care reform proposals: The Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 (H.R. 3962)passed in the House of Representatives on November 7, 2009; and The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2009 (H.R. 3590) introduced in the Senate on November 18, 2009, as a merged version of the Senate Finance Committee’s America’s Health Future Act (S.1796) and Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions’ (HELP) Affordable Health Choices Act (S. 1697). Additionally, this issue brief explores the potential implications of broad health care reforms for racial and ethnic minorities. Also discussed is how each bill could decrease disparities and improve minority health, where each falls short in advancing these goals, as well as the transitional challenges and questions for the future should health care reform legislation be enacted.

A DRA Project “State of the Health Equity Movement” Memo 09-01

Prepared by Jerusha Haasenritter and Stella Han, Institute for Alternative Futures
September 17, 2009

“The growth of the Health Equity Movement is reflected by a rising number of government entities (local, state, federal) and organizations explicitly recommending and pursuing health equity. This memo compiles the recommendations for 28 of these efforts and provides a table to illustrate the recommendations from nine of these.”

The introduction of this memo can be found below. To read the report in its entirety, you can download it here:

Introduction

In 2005 Michael Marmot stated, “If you catch the metro train in downtown Washington, D.C., to suburbs in Maryland, life expectancy is 57 years at beginning of the journey. At the end of the journey, it is 77 years. This means that there is 20‐year life expectancy in the nation’s capital, between the poor and predominantly African American people who live downtown, and the richer and predominantly non‐African American people who live in the suburbs … The social determinants of these two individual’s lives are different, and we must acknowledge this and think of poverty in a different way. It is about opportunities in life and control over one’s life, in addition to social conditions that shape the physical environment one lives in1.” The differences in these two individual’s lives reflect health inequities as they exist in the United States. However, a growing movement towards acknowledging and taking steps to reduce these inequities exists and is referred to as the health equity movement. This movement focuses on prevention and addressing the social determinants of health which include “income and social status (income inequality and social class), social support networks (social exclusion and social isolation), education, employment and working conditions (unemployment), physical environments (food and transportation), social environments, community norms, healthy child development, health services, and gender and culture2.” This movement advocates for health reform, not just health care reform.

Currently, health equity advocates are moving beyond solely identifying the inequities, to focus on what actions will create health equity. The following document compiles 28 reports (including memos and briefs) that serve as indicators of the health equity movement and its growth. All of these reports offer recommendations, strategies, and/or priorities for health equity, specific to the subject area of the report. The reports presents an examination of a variety of recommendations, representing different subject areas, and delivering a diverse focus.

The purpose of this document is to disseminate information by presenting varying strategies and recommendations for those who are interested to get a better idea of possible means to bring about an end result. This document has two components:

1. An illustrative chart of ten reports, giving an overview of certain themed recommendations; and
2. A list of 28 significant reports regarding health disparities, health equity, prevention, and the social determinants of health. The list details recommendations, priorities, and/or strategies, with links to each report included.

The reports included illustrate the growing activity in the health equity field. We acknowledge there are others and will gather these for subsequent inclusion in DRA Project reviews of activity. In considering the range of policies recommended, the advice from the Multnomah County Health Initiative (2009) is relevant to share. The effort recognized three emergent themes:

1. There is no single “magic bullet” policy or short list of policies that will eliminate the inequities that result in health disparities, solutions need to come from the coordinated effort of policy makers, bureaucrats and community members,
2. local efforts at eliminating inequities should be driven by local data on existing health disparities, and
3. local governments should look at their own policies that perpetuate inequities.

If you would like to request that any information be edited or added, or have other examples please email Jerusha Haasenritter at jhaasenritter@altfutures.com. This document is part of a larger DRA Project effort to identify “The State of the Health Equity Movement”. For more information, please email jhaasenritter@altfutures.com. To find out more about the DRA Project, please visit http://www.altfutures.com/draproject/ .

In order to build support for health reform and inform congressional Members and staff about health and health care disparities, the National Working Group on Health Disparities and Health Reform will be coordinating a congressional briefing on Tuesday, September 22 in the Senate from 12:00 pm to 1:30 pm in room SVC 208 and 209. The focus of this briefing will be to highlight the costs associated with health disparities in our country as well as the cost-savings we would realize from reducing these critical disparities. Within that context, the briefing will include discussions such as why data collection is critical, as well as issues regarding workforce development, language access, health coverage, quality, prevention, and the economic costs & savings.

Speakers include:
Norman Anderson, PhD (CEO – American Psychological Association),
Tom Bornemann, EdD (Director – The Carter Center Mental Health Program),
Carolyn Clancy, MD (Invited) (Director – AHRQ),
Kavita Patel, MD, M.Sc. (Invited) (Director of Policy – White House),
Marcos Pesquera, R.Ph., MPH (Director – Center on Health Disparities at Adventist HealthCare),
Brian Smedley, Ph.D. (VP and Director – Health Policy Institute at the Joint Center for Economic & Political Studies)

OMO believes that health reform MUST reduce health disparities and promote prevention. Reducing and eliminating health disparities will result in cost-savings and increased quality of care.

NEW REPORT EXPOSES RACIAL AND ETHNIC DISPARITIES IN CHILDREN’S HEALTH CARE

Today, a new report has found that racial and ethnic disparities in children’s healthcare are “extensive, pervasive, and persistent.” In addition to identifying the leading children’s health disparities, the report also provides recommendations on how to eliminate them. First Focus, the bipartisan children’s advocacy organization who commissioned the report, pointed to its findings as evidence that health reform should include a strengthening of Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).     “Access to quality healthcare is a right deserved by all children, regardless of race,” said Bruce Lesley, President of First Focus,. “Addressing health disparities for children requires several affirmative steps, many of which were included in the recent renewal of the Children’s Health Insurance Program. This report underscores the need to build upon the success of Medicaid and CHIP, which disproportionately enroll minority children and have been proven to reduce health disparities. Reform cannot leave those children worse off. Instead, Congress must ensure that the new system addresses racial and ethnic disparities in a manner that meets or exceeds that of Medicaid and CHIP.”   The report finds that children have ethnic and racial disparities across the health care spectrum, including mortality, access to care and use of services, prevention and population health, adolescent health, chronic diseases, special healthcare needs, quality of care, and organ transplantation. Moreover, having health insurance coverage results in a significant reduction of unmet needs for medical care. Unfortunately, the report finds that Latino and African American children account for 57 percent of all uninsured young people in America, even though they only represent 37 percent of the total population of children.    Entitled “Achieving optimal Health and Healthcare for All Children: How We Can Eliminate Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Children’s Health and Healthcare,” the report was authored by Glenn Flores, M.D., Director of the Division of General Pediatrics, Professor of Pediatrics and Public Health, and the Judith and Charles Ginsburg Chair in Pediatrics at the University of Texas Southwestern and Children’s Medical Center Dallas. To reduce differences in rates of health insurance coverage and health disparities, Dr. Flores’ recommendations include: * The inclusion of the critically important aspects of Medicaid and CHIP that reduce health disparities as part of health reform. This includes consumer protections, language services, standards for access to care and cultural competency, comprehensive benefits, and limited or no cost sharing; * Automated enrollment, and automated renewal of health coverage, to reduce the number of uninsured children and health disparities; * Additional funding for outreach and enrollment of kids as well as the establishment of a Center for Children’s Benefit Outreach and Enrollment, just as there is for senior citizens and the disabled through Medicare; * Extending insurance coverage to all children, including both documented and undocumented immigrants; * Providing reimbursements for medical interpreter services in all insurance plans, as is found in Medicaid, CHIP, and Medicare; The report can be viewed at http://www.firstfocus.net/pages/3615.

###   First Focus is a bipartisan advocacy organization that is committed to making children and their families a priority in federal policy and budget decisions. To learn more visit www.firstfocus.net