With all the mobile apps and resources available for games, entertainment and media, have you ever thought about the impact that mobile apps could have on your health? Introducing mHealth, the term used to describe the use of your mobile phone for health. The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies released a report entitled “Minorities, Mobile Broadband, and the Management of Chronic Diseases,” which evaluates the vast potential of mobile broadband technologies to help address our nation’s most pressing health concerns.

Currently, chronic diseases disproportionately affect minority communities. These diseases include diabetes, heart disease, cancer, arthritis, and obesity to name a few. The CDC reports that each year 7 out of 10 Americans die from illnesses related to chronic disease. Heart disease, cancer, and stroke account for more than 50% of all deaths in the US. In 2007, $2.2 trillion was spent on healthcare in the US, with $1.7 trillion spent to prevent and treat chronic illnesses. Eventhough chronic diseases affect minority communities disproportionately, many individuals lack the ability to effectively treat and monitor their health due to geographic, financial, cultural and linguistic barriers. Considering these facts, mHealth is our answer to breaking down these barriers.

Read more at Politic365.

Dr. Brian Smedley joins Frank Knapp on WOIC's U Need 2 Know to discuss the results of the Joint Center's recent poll, The Deep South and Medicaid Expansion.

Even though governors and lawmakers in five Deep South states oppose a plan to cover more people through Medicaid under the health care overhaul, 62 percent of the people in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina support expanding the program, according to a new poll.

The level of support for expanding Medicaid – the state and federal health insurance program for the poor and disabled – ranged from a low of 59 percent in Mississippi to a high of 65 percent in South Carolina, according to the poll by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a leading research and public policy think tank that focuses on African-Americans and other people of color.

Brian Smedley, director of the center’s health policy institute, said the findings show that lawmakers who are blocking Medicaid expansion in the five states are “out of step with their constituents.”

“A strong majority of respondents in our poll understand that not only will broader Medicaid coverage save lives and end unnecessary suffering, it will also stimulate job growth and the economy in these states,” Smedley said.

The health care law extends coverage to people who earn up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level – about $16,000 a year for an individual in 2013, or roughly $32,500 for a family of four. The federal government has pledged to pay all medical costs for the newly eligible enrollees in 2014, 2015 and 2016, and no less than 90 percent of their costs thereafter.

But the five states in the poll, all led by Republican governors, have decided not to participate. Ironically, Mississippi and Louisiana rank dead last among all states in the overall health of their residents, according to America’s Health Ranking, an annual report by the United Health Foundation, a nonprofit arm of the insurer UnitedHealth Group. The other three states in the poll – South Carolina, Alabama and Georgia – rank 46th, 45th and 36th, respectively.

Read more at The Miami Herald or the Kansas City Star.

Proponents say two new reports bolster the case for Medicaid expansion in Mississippi, including a poll that shows most people in Deep South states support it, even if their governors don’t.

But Republican Gov. Phil Bryant isn’t wavering in his opposition to Medicaid expansion and the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, and questions the poll’s veracity.

A poll by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, released Tuesday, says a majority of people — 62 percent — across five Southern states including Mississippi support Medicaid expansion as called for in the Affordable Care Act, despite opposition from Southern states’ governors to expansion.

In the poll, support for Medicaid expansion in Mississippi was lower than that in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina, pollsters said, but still at 59 percent.

“I hope the leaders of these states will hear the will of the people,” Ralph B. Everett, president of the Joint Center, said during a teleconference from Washington on Tuesday. The center is a Washington-based public policy organization that deals primarily with minority issues.

Bryant spokesman Mick Bullock said, “Last year, Mississippi spent more than $1.4 billion in state dollars on the existing Medicaid program — more than one quarter of our total state support budget. I’m sure the survey results would have been different had taxpayers been asked if they wanted to foot the bill for a drastic increase to this already enormous cost. Mississippi cannot afford it, and as Gov. Bryant has said many times, any expansion of Medicaid would result in tax increases for Mississippians or cuts to critical spending in areas like education, public safety and economic development.”

The poll showed a large difference in support between races — with African-American support at 85 percent to 53 percent for whites — economic classes and political parties. Only 38 percent of Republicans supported expansion, compared to 87 percent of Democrats.

Read more at the Jackson Clarion Ledger or the Hattiesburg American.

Orleans Parish PLACE MATTERS Team Leader Andre Perry speaks to 89.9 WWNO about PLACE MATTERS and community advocacy in New Orleans.

A sense of place is powerful in New Orleans, where people tend to identify strongly with their neighborhoods. But while the culture and tradition of these neighborhoods may enrich the local lifestyle, a new initiative is analyzing how other particulars of place can have precisely the opposite effect. The program is called Orleans Place Matters and it takes a hard look at neighborhood-level factors ranging from housing and transportation to discrimination and the legacy of segregation.

“So we see and are not surprised by the Lower Ninth Ward, Central City, parts of Treme, parts of the Seventh Ward with extremely low life outcomes, because of the history, because of the inability to bring equity to those places,” says Andre Perry, an education policy expert at Loyola University. “Just to be clear, in some communities, the life expectancy rate is 55.5 years compared to 80 for others, so there’s a stark difference.”

Perry is the team leader for Orleans Place Matters. This local program is part of a national initiative from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a research group based in Washington, D.C. In cities across the country, its Place Matters program gives community organizations the data and analysis they need, both to understand what factors impact health in their neighborhoods and to advocate for effective change.

“We’re going to continue to produce reports and produce data that community members can leverage to get better policy for their communities,” Perry says. “Families need data to go to city council and go to the mayor and say, look this is what’s happening. And so we want to provide that data for them.”

Read more and listen to the radio story at 89.9 WWNO.

A new poll by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies finds solid support across the South from a majority of both African Americans and non-Hispanic whites for the expansion of the Medicaid program as called for in the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

The Deep South and Medicaid Expansion: The View from Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina was conducted in March and April, 2013. The poll found that 62.3 percent of 2,500 respondents living in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina support expanding the Medicaid program to cover more low-income, uninsured adults. There were racial differences on Medicaid expansion but, nonetheless, majorities of both African Americans (85.3 percent) and non-Hispanic whites (53.3 percent) favored it. Self-identified liberals (78.2 percent) and moderates (69.3 percent) solidly favored Medicaid expansion. While a plurality of conservatives opposed expansion (48.9 percent), it should be noted that a substantial 46.9 percent of conservatives supported it. A large majority of Democrats (87.1 percent) and a majority of independents (56.6 percent) supported expansion, while Republican identifiers (37.9 percent) were the subgroup most opposed.

In addition to support for the Medicaid expansion, residents of the polled states showed strong support for the law’s health coverage tax credit subsidies (68.8 percent in favor) and the creation of statewide insurance marketplaces (75 percent in favor).

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“These findings indicate that residents of these Southern states understand the benefits of the ACA’s Medicaid expansion for their communities, and want their elected officials to carefully study the merits of the law before expressing opposition,” said Ralph B. Everett, President and CEO of the Joint Center. “I hope leaders in these states will hear the will of the people when considering this historic opportunity to ensure that more people gain health insurance coverage.”

Read the entire press release by clicking the icon below.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) expands Medicaid so that it can provide health insurance to a larger pool of low income uninsured adults, including adults with no children and whose incomes are below about $16,000 a year. The federal government will pay the entire cost for the first three years, and after that states will pay 10 percent and the federal government 90 percent. In National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, the Supreme Court ruled that states may choose whether or not to participate in the expansion.

In the Deep South states of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, political opposition to the expansion is strong. The Republican governors of these states—Robert Bentley (AL), Phil Bryant (MS), Nathan Deal (GA), Nikki Haley (SC), and Bobby Jindal (LA)—each opposes the expansion, as do the Republican majorities in the states’ legislatures.

This study examines how the public in these states views the Affordable Care Act generally and the Medicaid expansion specifically.

The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies applauds a new report released yesterday by Community Catalyst on the practice patterns of dental therapists, who are mid-level providers of oral health care.  The report, entitled The Economic Viability of Dental Therapists, is the first assessment of how mid-level dental providers, specifically dental therapists, are practicing in the United States.  

Oral health care disparities are some of the deepest and most persistent health disparities in the United States.  People who have low incomes, children, racial and ethnic minorities, older adults and residents of rural communities face an array of barriers to accessing routine and preventive dental care. Yet dental disease is the number one chronic illness affecting children, and is more common than asthma. Seventy-two percent of American Indian and Alaska Native children aged six to eight have untreated cavities—more than twice the rate of the general population.  Thirty-seven percent of non-Hispanic black children and 41 percent of Hispanic children have untreated tooth decay, compared with 25 percent of white children.

The Economic Viability report assesses dental therapists practicing in Alaska and Minnesota, and finds that they have effectively expanded access to routine and preventive oral health care for low-income adults, children, and people living in tribal communities. The report finds that 85 percent of the care dental therapists provide is routine and preventive, and that dental therapists cost their employers less than 30 cents for every dollar of revenue they generate.

“The report comes at a time when more than a dozen states are exploring using mid-level dental providers as a way to greatly expand access to dental care,” said Brian D. Smedley, Ph.D., Vice President and Director of the Joint Center’s Health Policy Institute. “Eight states have put forward legislation seeking to authorize dental therapists. Several other states have called for studying the model further. Outside of the U.S., dental therapists have practiced successfully in more than 50 other countries for the better part of a century. We believe they are an important part of a comprehensive strategy to reduce and ultimately eliminate oral health care disparities.”
 

Download the entire press release by clicking the icon below.

This morning, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies’ Health Policy Institute hosted members of Congress and a panel of local leaders for a congressional briefing on health inequities.  Panelists discussed their experience with the center’s PLACE MATTERS program, an initiative dedicated to helping local leaders to identify and improve social, economic and environmental conditions that shape health in their communities.

The PLACE MATTERS Program aims to advance health equity by acknowledging racial inequities as the “root cause” of health inequities in communities across the U.S. Research commissioned by the Joint Center estimated the cost of health inequalities experienced by African Americans, Asian Americans and Latinos to be $1.24 trillion from 2003-2006, prompting a desire to further the analysis and advance creative policy solutions through the development of the PLACE MATTERS program, operated since 2006. Place Matters teams work in 24 jurisdictions in 10 states and the District of Columbia, using research to build a case around the root causes of health disparities and developing innovative policy solutions to improve health.

Representatives Barbara Lee (CA-9), Jim McDermott (WA-7) and Robin Kelly (IL-2) attended the briefing, acknowledging the connection between local conditions and community health. Rep. Barbara Lee told the group, “Our health really is determined by our environment – place matters.”

Read more at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.