News

The six-part Preparing for 2019 Open Enrollment series was prepared by HRSA’s ACE TA Center to help agencies assist clients with enrollment and renewals during the 2019 Marketplace Open Enrollment Period, November 1 through December 15, 2018 in most states.

2019 health insurance plans & prices are available for review!

This HIV.gov blog summarizes Part 6 of the Preparing for Open Enrollment series and covers the following:

• Tips for finding out which plans are being offered in your area
• How to find a plan that best meets your clients’ needs
• How to prepare clients for their enrollment appointments
• Open enrollment deadline reminders

Tips for finding out which plans are being offered in your area

In the final days before Open Enrollment, learn more about the Marketplace plans being offered in your area.

How to find a plan that best meets your clients’ needs

If no one is analyzing Marketplace plans in you area, you can preview plans and prices on HealthCare.gov. Then use the ACE TA Center Health Care Plan Selection Worksheet to help your clients find the best plan for their needs.

How to prepare clients for their enrollment appointments

Start scheduling enrollment appointments and help clients gather the information they’ll need for their application.

Open enrollment deadline reminders

2019 Open Enrollment begins on November 1 and ends on December 15 for most states, including those that use HealthCare.gov.

Read more on HIV.gov.

Hispanics/Latinos are the largest minority group in the United States with over 59 million people comprising 18% of the population. However, this growing population’s access to health care is limited by disproportionate rates of underinsurance and underutilization of care, as well as lack of access to providers who speak Spanish and culturally appropriate health services. Even with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, Hispanics remain the group most likely to be uninsured. In 2016, the uninsured rate for Hispanics was 16% compared with 6.3% among non-Hispanic whites, 10.5% among non-Hispanic blacks, and 7.6% among Asians. Hispanics are also more likely to struggle with overall economic adversity and have a lower socioeconomic status than non-Hispanic whites which impacts healthcare coverage even further. Compounded economic and health-related stressors can severely increase daily stress. As a result, research has shown that Hispanics are more vulnerable to the adverse mental health impacts of a cancer diagnosis when compared to non-Hispanic whites.

Cancer in Hispanic populations

Cancer is the leading cause of mortality among Hispanics, accounting for 22% of all deaths. Compared to non-Hispanic whites, Hispanics are more likely to be diagnosed with advanced stages of disease and experience poor quality of life following a cancer diagnosis.

Mental Health Effects of a Cancer Diagnosis

There can be significant psychosocial effects of a cancer diagnosis, especially amongst patients with a pre-existing mental health condition. According to The National Cancer Institute:

• 1 in 3 people with cancer experience mental or emotional distress.
• Hispanics are more vulnerable to adverse mental health impacts due to cancer, when compared to non-Hispanic whites.

For more research articles on the mental health impacts of a cancer diagnosis in Hispanic populations, see this study from Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center or this study from the Rutgers Cancer Institute.

Managing the psychosocial effects of cancer can be key to ensuring longer survivorship. Evidence-based psychosocial interventions such as cognitive behavioral therapies that focus on stress management, relaxation skills, coping skills, communication skills and social support have been associated with improved emotional well-being, reduced depressive symptoms, and reduced symptom burden among Hispanic patients diagnosed with breast or prostate cancer. These studies have demonstrated consistent areas of improvement in emotional well-being.

Helping Hispanic Patients Cope with the Psychosocial Effects of a Cancer Diagnosis

When seeking to help patients cope with the psychosocial effects of a cancer diagnosis, it is important that providers consider several important factors. First, faith, spirituality, and family involvement are a large part of the Hispanic community’s cultural beliefs. It is important to recognize that these cultural priorities can provide support to patients and play an integral role when interacting with the Hispanic community. Additionally, mental health providers must be aware of and respect that many Hispanics define family differently than other groups. 

Read more on BHtheChange.org.

The Center for Women and Families is closing its domestic violence and sexual assault emergency shelter, but the move should actually increase the presence of the nonprofit and the reach of its services in Southern Indiana, President and CEO Elizabeth Wessels-Martin said.

“While we have been able to serve many people in shelter over the years, we have been limited by shelter capacity, and we believe this transition will allow us to help more people who may be in danger…,” Wessels-Martin said in a news release.

The shelter, which had 159 residents in 2016 and 153 in 2017, will be phased out beginning Nov. 1 and CWF will begin implementing mobile advocacy.

In an interview, Wessels-Martin explained that running the brick and mortar shelter costs hundreds of thousands of dollars a year when, in reality, most victims do not want to use a shelter.

“We know 75 percent of victims don’t seek out shelter. They say ‘I won’t go to a shelter, I’ll stay in a car before I go to a shelter,’” Wessels-Martin said.

“People think shelter is the only answer and it is not. There are many, many more options for women that leads to self-sufficiency and leads to developing a skill set they haven’t been able to develop because of their situation,” she said.

CWF will provide the same services, including, but not limited to, safety planning, legal advocacy, transportation and counseling, but rather than having clients come to the shelter for those, they’ll offer flexible meeting locations.

Read more on NewsandTribune.com.

Philippine American Foundation for Charities, Inc (PAFC) & Philippine Embassy, convened an inaugural forum on Filipino American Mental Health on October 20, 2018, for a discussion around advancing mental health efforts in the Filipino American community.

The new NNEDshare post shares the initial meeting report, and other resources.  View the NNEDshare post here!

While information is still being processed from the forum to solidify next steps, PAFC has confirmed a partnership with SAMHSA and the Campaign to Change Direction to develop outreach tools around the 5 signs of emotional suffering in the various languages of the Philippines.

Ways you can be involved:

• Submit a photo! Snap a photo of you and/or your community with your hands up to signify you know the five signs of emotional suffering. PFAC will be using these photos for the social media campaign launch and the Campaign to Change Direction website. Submit your photos no later than Friday, November 30th.
  
• Help with materials translation! If you would like to be involved in the translation and development of these materials, contact PFAC president Krystle Canare directly no later than Wednesday, October 31, 2018.

​Visit NNEDshare to learn more and view related resources!

On Valentine’s Day 2017, Ebony Boyd picked up some holiday doughnuts as she headed to work feeling “blessed and happy,” she recalls. She was six months pregnant and excited to be having a baby whom she and her boyfriend had already named.

But a few hours after she got to work, Boyd, 36, started feeling excruciating pain. Her doctor suggested that she head for a hospital emergency room. Once there, “they checked for my baby’s heartbeat and there wasn’t any,” Boyd said. Boyd barely had a chance to begin to grieve her loss when she started hemorrhaging badly. Her blood pressure skyrocketed. Two transfusions later, Boyd started to stabilize.

But just as she was about to be discharged from the hospital three days later, she developed a pulmonary embolism. “They told me if I had been sent home I might not have made it to the next day,” sBoyd, who lives in the Bronx, said in a recent interview.

Boyd could easily be one of the data points in a new study released on Wednesday. It found that African- American women like her, along with women of other minority groups, are far more likely to experience severe, life-threatening complications related to giving birth than white women.

“It’s important that we identify racial and ethnic minority women with chronic conditions as a high-risk group,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Lindsay Admon, an assistant professor in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Michigan. “The trends we’re seeing now are startling. They’ve gotten some national attention directed towards the health of new mothers.”

The big concern is maternal death, which also hits minorities harder than whites. Deaths are hard to study, though, because there aren’t that many of them each year. So Admon and her colleagues focused on severe, life-threatening complications that could kill a woman if she didn’t get the right care at exactly the right time. The researchers figured that by scrutinizing more than 40,000 severe complications they might see ways that the care of moms-to-be could be improved and deaths related to delivery reduced.

Recent studies that have found mortality rates due to pregnancy complications on the rise have spurred some officials into action. This week, a bipartisan group of senators sent a letter to Health Secretary Alex Azar saying, “This troubling trend makes the United States an outlier among every other developed country.”

The researchers found that non-Hispanic black women had a 70 percent higher rate of major birth-related problems compared with non-Hispanic white women. Compared with non-Hispanic white women, Hispanic, Asian or Pacific Islander, and American Indian or Alaska Native women also had higher rates of severe complications.

“Recognizing that these disparities exist, it behooves us to figure out how to decrease the disparities,” said Dr. Alan Peaceman, chief of maternal-fetal medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine and chief of obstetrics at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. “The numbers here are concerningly high.”

Read more on NBCNews.com.

The following was written by and from the perspective of Eric D. Hargan, Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

A key piece to success in serving the American people involves going to them in person and hearing what is important in their lives. That was the reason that a large delegation from HHS recently made the trip to the interior of Alaska.

Our delegation visited with Alaska Native community leaders and families in Allakaket, Alatna, Hughes, Koyukuk, Manley, Tanana, Rampart, and Fairbanks. Through community meetings and tours of healthcare facilities, we heard about everything from the latest in Telehealth technology and medicine “vending machines” to Head Start and eldercare and the continuing challenges of clean drinking water and waste disposal.

In addition to helping to enhance HHS’s understanding of the challenges faced by remote tribal communities, the tour informed our meeting with the Secretary’s Tribal Advisory Committee (STAC), which convened in Fairbanks on September 24 and 25.

During our community visits, it became abundantly clear that the quality of care offered in Alaska Native health facilities should be a point of pride for everyone involved in tribal health.  Alaska Native healthcare providers build on the strengths of tribal culture, customs and community to deliver an impressive whole-of-person approach to care.  Patient needs, community providers, and community leaders are driving the delivery of quality healthcare.

Providing care in rural and remote areas is a challenge—one of the most significant problems American healthcare faces.  The challenges are especially substantial in Alaska, America’s most sparsely populated state, and in other parts of Indian Country.

Read more on SAMHSA.gov.