Roland Martin talks to Dr. Brian Smedley and Rep. Marcia Fudge about the effects of the sequestration on minorities.

A transcript of this interview can be found at Roland Martin Reports.

Dreaded automatic federal spending cuts, otherwise known as “sequestration,” swept into Washington on Friday. Eleventh hour meetings were hastily scheduled, yet players on both sides of the aisle seemed resigned to the reality of $86 billion suddenly snatched from the federal budget.

Opposing sides argued all week over how severe the cuts would be and whose idea it was in the first place. However, the stubborn resolves of Democrats and Republicans on and off Capitol Hill offered little hope of any foreseeable compromise.

“There’s another huge event that takes place that could be even worse, and that’s when the Continuing Resolution on March 27 takes place,” Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) told the Tribune. Meeks is holding out hope that a deal can be reached some time before Congress negotiates short-term spending plans by the end of March. Some observers are counting on that moment when House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) can finally sit down and avoid fiscal calamity.

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Experts worry most about the unemployment benefits being reduced by 10 percent – not good for African Americans who are still facing a jobless rate double the national average. And even as local communities fret over struggling school systems, the sequester axe takes no prisoners on education when cutting $3 billion in financial aid for low income students and in desperately needed school programs servicing at-risk youth.

Also alarming is the impact sequestration would have on key public health services affecting people of color, especially women and children. “Sequestration would result in 25,000 fewer breast and cervical cancer screenings, 42,000 fewer HIV tests and 900,000 fewer patients served at Community Health Centers,” says Dr. Brian Smedley, vice president and director of the Health Policy Institute at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. “There are just so many vital programs that detect chronic diseases earlier, and this is critical since we have a higher burden of disease in the community.”

Read more at The Philadelphia Tribune.

The budget cuts known as "the sequester" will hit communities of color particularly hard when they take effect Friday, according to a panel discussion Thursday at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington.

The sequester, as the cuts are known inside the Beltway, "hampers federal efforts to protect health, prevent disease and disability, and promote opportunity for communities already burdened by risks for poor health," said Brian D. Smedley of the JCPES.

While the poor are shielded from many cuts (Social Security and Medicaid are exempt), the sequester will affect some programs that disproportionately serve people of color. Screenings and tests offered through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be cut, according to the JCPES, as will federal funding for community health centers and early childhood care and education programs, as well as WIC, the program that provides supplemental nutrition for women, infants, and children.

In practical terms, that means CDC would provide 424,000 fewer HIV tests and 25,000 fewer breast and cervical cancer screenings for low-income, high-risk women, the JCPES said, citing a recent House Appropriations Committee report. Federal funding for community health centers would be cut by $120 million, which could mean that 900,000 fewer patients would be served. About 70,000 children would lose access to Head Start, and 600,000 low-income pregnant and breastfeeding women and their children could be cut from the WIC rolls.

Because racial and ethnic minorities, who represent 37 percent of the overall U.S. population, disproportionately use those services, panelists worry that those communities will be hit hard by the cuts.

Read more at National Journal.

Dr. Brian Smedley delivers the keynote address at the 34th Annual Minority Health Conference at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Five policy experts delved into details on how impending sequestration cuts will further disadvantage those who depend on federal assistance programs, particularly people of color, during a Thursday panel discussion at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

At the event, entitled The Impact of Sequestration on the Health and Well-Being of Communities of Color and held on the eve of the sequestration’s March 1 effective date, panel members discussed the array of health, human development, and environmental programs that are important to communities of color and which face particularly devastating cuts.  Among them are the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), Head Start, HIV prevention and testing, and the federal program that provides low-income, uninsured, and underinsured women access to breast and cervical cancer screening and diagnostic testing.  

Brian Smedley, Ph.D., Vice President of the Joint Center and Director of its Health Policy Institute, reported that the sequestration will result in 600,000 women, infants, and children losing WIC services, 70,000 children losing access to Head Start programs, 900,000 fewer patients served by community health centers and 25,000 fewer cancer screenings and 424,000 fewer HIV tests being covered by CDC funds. The proportion of people of color in each program ranges from 46 to 77 percent, he said.
 

Download the entire press release by clicking the icon below.

A panel of experts will discuss the potential impact of the sequestration program cuts on communities of color at a Thursday morning event hosted by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

The event will take place on Thursday, February 28, 2013 from 8:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. at the Joint Center, located at 805 Fifteenth Street, NW, in Washington, DC. The package of automatic across-the-board spending cuts will go into effect on Friday, March 1, unless President Obama and Members of Congress are able to hammer out an agreement to avoid the harmful impact they are expected to have on the economy, jobs, and the most vulnerable members of society.

“While most Americans will feel the impact of the sequestration, these cuts will have a particularly devastating effect on communities of color, where many people are still struggling to join the economic recovery,” said Ralph B. Everett, the Joint Center’s President and CEO.  “To pull the rug out from under them would be destructive and would not serve the nation well.”  

The participants for Thursday’s panel are:

• Ellen Nissenbaum, Senior Vice President for Government Affairs, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities;
• Liany Elba Arroyo, Associate Director, Education and Children's Policy Project, National Council of La Raza;
• Amber D. Ebarb, Program Manager, Policy Research Center, National Congress of American Indians;
• Priscilla Huang, J.D., Policy Director, Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum;
• Brian Smedley, Ph.D., Vice President and Director, Health Policy Institute, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies;
• Ralph B. Everett, Esq., President and CEO, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies (Moderator)

To read the entire press release, click the icon below. For event information and registration, visit our Events page.

The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies will present a panel discussion on Thursday, February 28, 2013 to assess the implications of the looming federal sequestration for health, human development, and environmental programs that are important to communities of color. Sequestration will significantly cut federal programs such as the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC; Head Start; HIV prevention and testing; and programs that provide low-income, uninsured, and underinsured women access to breast and cervical cancer screening and diagnostic testing, among other programs.

Cuts in these and other programs, mandated by sequestration, are expected to have wide impact on communities of color, which are already vulnerable to the lingering effects of the recession. Panelists will discuss how these programs provide vital health, environmental and human development services, and particularly how the sequestration will aggravate existing racial and ethnic health disparities and increase the burden of disease – a burden that an earlier Joint Center study documented as costing the nation $1.24 trillion over four years.  Sequestration therefore could increase health care costs, increase the number of Americans who require disability assistance and reduce overall economic productivity.

Panelists will include:

• Ellen Nissenbaum, Senior Vice President for Government Affairs, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
• Liany Elba Arroyo, Associate Director, Education and Children's Policy Project, National Council of La Raza
• Amber D. Ebarb, Program Manager, Policy Research Center, National Congress of American Indians
• Priscilla Huang, JD, Policy Director, Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum
• Brian Smedley, Ph.D., Vice President and Director, Joint Center Health Policy Institute

For more information and to register, please click the REGISTER button to your right.

Deborah Lewis is a licensed social worker serving court-referred elderly clients in the Washington, D.C. metro area. Her work takes her to two hospitals, each in different zip codes in the city. She recently sat in the outpatient waiting area in the two different hospitals within a 48-hour period.

She was shocked and dismayed by the stark contrasts in the "health" of the populations at each location.

The predominately middle-class, largely white, elderly outpatients at one hospital were walking without walkers. Most were clearly there for wellness and prevention services.

Across town in the largest hospital serving African-Americans and Latinos, Deborah recalled being overwhelmed by the high levels of debilitation among these outpatients -- wheelchairs, walkers, canes were the norm, not the exception. Most of these patients were struggling to manage chronic diseases.

It was for her, an African-American professional and a baby boomer, a painful reminder that where you live in America makes a significant difference in your risk for illness and premature death.

Here in the United States, a zip code can tell us a lot about how well and how long you'll live. So can census tracts. Most people are stunned to hear the differences:

• In Bernalillo County, N.M., home to Albuquerque, people in some census tracts live an average of 22 years less than those in other some tracts.
• In Boston, the difference in life expectancy by census tracts is 33 years.
• In Cook County, Ill., which includes Chicago, the difference is 18 years. (These figures come from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies' Place Matters reports.)

What's behind these differences in life expectancy? Disparities in neighborhood conditions. Our history of residential segregation has concentrated not just certain communities (typically communities of color), but also poverty.

Read more at The Huffington Post.

As we prepare to celebrate the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., we should be cautious about congratulating ourselves for having overcome segregation and the resultant inequality against which King is best known for fighting. Indeed, the problems of racial segregation in housing and education are no less urgent than they were 40 years ago.

A study published this past May in the American Sociological Review shows that today, blacks and whites overwhelmingly live in neighborhoods with members of their own race. Though they do so by choice, this is still problematic because, as a 2011 study from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies found, in the cities with such high levels of racial segregation, blacks and Latinos live far shorter lives than whites and are much more prone to long-term health problems, like asthma, due to higher pollution levels.

The picture is no brighter in public schools, as a report issued in September by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA shows. It found that school segregation for blacks, Latinos and poor students has returned to levels we haven’t seen since the 1970s. And we know from 30 years’ worth of research that test scores and college-level success are far lower for students who attend racially segregated schools. Nonetheless, in our present moment, 60% to 80% of districts in major metropolitan areas like Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Dallas have schools that are overwhelmingly segregated by race.

Read more at TIME.

Between now and the inauguration on Jan. 21, The Root will be taking a daily look at the president's record on a number of policy issues, including his first-term accomplishments and what many Americans hope to see him accomplish in a second term. Today: Addressing health disparities and African Americans' health care needs.

First-term accomplishments: President Obama signed the historic Affordable Health Care Act in 2010, which extended health care coverage to 7 million African Americans.There's a lot in this law for people of color," said Brian Smedley, vice president and director of the health policy institute at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, in an interview with The Root.

Smedley pointed to many provisions that are already in effect. For example, insurance companies can no longer deny claims based on pre-existing conditions, and young adults can now stay on their parents' health care plan until they reach age 26. That means 230,000 black women and 180,000 black men between the ages of 19 and 25 can continue to have health insurance under their parents' plan. The legislation also raised the eligibility requirements for Medicaid, providing 4 million more African Americans access to health insurance coverage. Seniors will now be able to get annual wellness exams, diabetes screenings and colorectal cancer screenings.

But even more importantly, said Smedley, the Affordable Care Act tackles the structural inequalities that disproportionately hurt highly segregated communities of color, the conditions in neighborhoods that lead people of color to be sicker in the first place. He points to the inequality in education, employment and housing in segregated communities where neighborhoods are food deserts, overrun by fast-food restaurants and convenience stores that sell unhealthy deli and junk food.

Read more at The Root.