News

The Disparities Leadership Program (DLP) is a year-long, hands-on executive education program focused exclusively on helping health care leaders achieve equity in quality. The program is designed to help you translate the latest understanding disparities into realistic solutions you can adopt within your organization.

The DLP aims to create leaders prepared to meet the challenges of health care transformation by improving quality for at-risk populations who experience disparities. The program has three main goals:

• To arm health care leaders with a rich understanding of the causes of disparities and the vision to implement solutions and transform their organization deliver high-value health care. Solutions are specifically focused on identifying disparities impacting the quality and value of care within high-cost, high-risk areas such as preventing readmissions and avoidable hospitalizations; improving patient safety and experience; and excelling in population health.
• To help leaders create strategic plans or projects to advance their work in reducing disparities in a customized way, with practical benefits tailored to every organization.
• To align the goals of health equity with health care reform and value-based purchasing. We support the organizational changes necessary to respond to national movements including health care reform, value-based purchasing, as well as exceeding quality standards (such as the CLAS standards) and meeting regulations (such as those from the Joint Commission, the National Committee for Quality Assurance, and the National Quality Forum).

The Disparities Solution Center (DSC) has the unique advantage of eleven years of experience developing, coordinating and operating the DLP, the only program of its kind in the nation. To date, the DLP has trained eleven cohorts that include a total of 378 participants from 172 organizations (89 hospitals, 41 health plans, 20 community health organizations, 5 professional organizations, 2 hospital trade organizations, 1 school of medicine, 2 dental benefits administrators, 1 federal government agency, 1 state government agency, 1 city government agency, and 9 others) representing 32 states, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Canada and Switzerland. 

Deadline to submit Intent to Apply (recommended but not required) is November 17, 2017.

Read more on MGHDisparitiessolutions.org.

New research suggests that Latino children are more likely to suffer from depression and other mental health illnesses, but only 8 percent of Latinos say their child has received mental health services. Latino youth are depressed at a higher rate than any minority besides Native Americans, according to the Salud America! network at UT Health San Antonio.

Low response or desire to seek therapy can lead to greater chances that these conditions will go untreated over the course of a person’s lifetime. From language barriers to economic hardship, social factors can be a significant contributor to emotional stressors affecting children in the home and in school.

More than 17 percent of Latino students surveyed report being bullied. Thoughts of suicide are up to 8 times higher for Latino students, who say they feel less connected or lack communication with their families. 

Fortunately, several solutions are emerging, according to the research:

• Latino children have less stress and more classroom success in programs that mix regular physical activity with mental health education.
• Community-based, cultural interventions have shown promise in improving Latino children’s access to mental health care.
• School-based bullying prevention programs can decrease bullying by up to 25 percent.

“Despite the high rate of mental health issues faced by Latino children, disparities persist in how they use and receive mental health services,” said Amelie G. Ramirez, Dr.P.H., lead author of the research review. She is the director of Salud America! and the Institute for Health Promotion Research in the Joe R. & Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine at UT Health San Antonio.

Read more on TPR.org. Read more on News.UTHSCSA.edu.

When Karla Mendoza moved from her predominantly Mexican-American neighborhood in San Diego to go to Harvard University four years ago, she felt like a minority for the first time

“I felt lonely. I felt distant. Both my roommates were white, upper-middle class,” Mendoza says. “We got along great, but when class or race issues arose, a wall came up. I felt like I couldn’t express what I felt, and they felt like I was attacking them.”

Even though she was a student liaison for mental health – she informed freshmen about the counseling available – Mendoza said she didn’t recognize her own signs of depression and anxiety.

“I would go three, four days without showering because I couldn’t stand to be alone with myself,” she said. But she didn’t seek help.

Mendoza, 22, who ended up taking a year off before returning to Harvard this fall, illustrates a paradox: Surveys show that nonwhite students are often more stressed than their white classmates, but experts say they’re less likely to seek psychological help.

This further complicates efforts to increase the proportion of black and Hispanic students who succeed in earning college and university degrees, and who graduate at rates lower than whites.

Seeking psychological help is “culturally unacceptable in the African-American and Latino communities,” says Terri Wright, executive director of the Steve Fund, a nonprofit established by the family of a black graduate student named Stephen Rose who committed suicide. The organization advocates for mental and emotional well-being for black, Hispanic, Native American and Asian college students. Within these groups, “the words ‘therapist’ or counselor’ are loaded,” Wright says. “If you have problems, you don’t go outside your family, or maybe you talk to your faith leader.”

As much as nonwhite students resist taking advantage of mental health services, there’s evidence they’re more in need of them. More than half of black college students report feeling overwhelmed most or all of the time, compared with 40 percent of whites, a survey conducted by the Harris Poll, the JED Foundation and other groups found. About half of black and Hispanic students, compared with 41 percent of whites, say it seems everyone has college figured out but them.

That’s because black and Hispanic students often carry a heavy load of stress. “[I]n addition to the stressors most students face at college – being away from home, time management – there are race-related stressors or minority-status stressors,” says Kevin Cokley, a professor of educational psychology and African and African diaspora studies at the University of Texas—Austin.

These stressors include assumptions by some white students and faculty that a minority student wouldn’t be in the classroom but for affirmative action, says David Rivera, an associate professor of counselor education at Queens College of the City University of New York. That perception can make itself felt in seemingly innocuous comments such as, “‘I’m surprised you did well on that paper,'” Rivera says. “If you confront it, you’re dismissed, but if you ignore it, you’re left holding on to that experience,” he adds.

Read more USNews.com.

The opioid addiction crisis is having a devastating impact on rural communities, where older people are especially vulnerable to becoming “collateral damage,” a report from Grantmakers In Aging finds.

The report, Heartache, Pain, and Hope: Rural Communities, Older People, and the Opioid Crisis: An Introduction for Funders (24 pages, PDF), found that the epidemic of addiction has affected entire rural communities, many of which lack substance-abuse infrastructure and resources. Rural populations also are older and poorer on average than non-rural populations, and rural America in general tends to be overlooked in national policy making discussions. In 2015, rural Appalachia, New England, and the Midwest had the highest drug overdose rates, with people in rural counties, according to the CDC, nearly twice as likely to overdose on prescription painkillers as people in cities.

“Opioid misuse by older adults is very common in this region, largely due to poor health literacy and misunderstanding of the medication itself rather than a blatant desire to abuse,” a healthcare worker in rural Ironton, Missouri, says in the report. “They also have very little understanding of serious side effects like respiratory depression and potential signs of an overdose.”

The study also found that the repercussions of addiction extend far beyond the addicted individuals, affecting child welfare, public safety, criminal justice, the economy, caregiving, and housing. And as more adult children with addiction problems move back in with their parents, older people can become easy targets for financial, physical, and emotional abuse; reports of elder abuse cases in Massachusetts, for instance, have increased 37 percent over the past five years.

At the same time, the report finds that rural communities have a number of assets they can deploy to combat the epidemic, including cohesive, supportive kinship and community networks and flexible, innovative local institutions. Indeed, by understanding both the needs and the potential of rural communities, funders can achieve greater impact in addressing the crisis. Funded by Tivity Health and the Empire Health Foundation, the report highlights proven programs, partnerships, policy recommendations, and scientific and medical responses that governments, communities, nonprofits, and philanthropies can support and scale.

Read more on PhilanthropyNewsDigest.org.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Office of Minority Health (CMS OMH) in partnership with Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) released The Roadmap to Behavioral Health.

This guide offers important information about mental health and substance use disorder services, finding a behavioral health provider, defining behavioral health terms, receiving services, and following up on care. The resource walks through the 8 Steps of the Roadmap to offer information specific to behavioral health, and offers a glossary and links to other HHS resources. 

Download the guide (pdf).

To learn more or download C2C resources, please visit go.cms.gov/c2c or email CoverageToCare@cms.hhs.gov.

September is the month when those of us who work in suicide prevention make a special effort to reach out and remind the public of the toll that suicide takes on our families, communities, nation, and world. This year, the second weekend in September (September 8-10) has been designated a National Day of Prayer for Faith, Hope, & Life. This observance is an initiative of the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention Faith Communities Task Force. It is part of their Faith.Hope.Life Campaign, which asks faith communities in the United States, regardless of creed, to focus one Sabbath each year on preventing suicide.

Read more on ActionAllianceForSuicidePrevention.org.