Will (or can) universal health care eliminate racial disparities in access and treatment? That was the question up for discussion among health providers, politicians and policy wonks at a Friday morning forum at BRAMS Hall in the Hill.
The forum, co-sponsored by the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut and the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, focused on one issue: To make sure that the law that gets passed for universal health care incorporates policies to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in health and health care.
Four panelists began by making short presentations: James Rawlings (pictured), a vice president at Yale New Haven Hospital and Chair of the Connecticut NAACP’s Health Committee; Katrina Clark, executive director of the Fair Haven Community Health Clinic; Jeanette de Jesus, executive director of the Hispanic Health Council; and Durrell Fox, a co-founder of Critical Mass., a statewide initiative to eliminate racial and ethnic health disparities in Massachusetts.
Rawlings reported on what he called the “horrific” findings of a recent study from his organization about racial health disparities in Connecticut. As one example, he said African Americans tend to get diseases such as diabetes and hypertension 20 years earlier than the majority community, with critical ramifications for individuals, families, and businesses. He said the findings had produced some strange bedfellows, like the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, which is usually not advocating the same things as the NAACP, “because the impact [of illnesses on people in their 40’s instead of their 60’s] is enormous.”
Clark (pictured), whose clinic serves 13,000 mostly Latino patients a year, said she has become an incrementalist when it comes to health care reform — celebrating small gains in screening, diagnosis and care even while the goal of equal access and treatment for all is yet to be achieved.
DeJesus read from the introduction from her organization’s 2005 report: “The state of Latino health in Connecticut is in crisis. Drastic inequities in health care, health care access, health literacy, socio-economic status, environmental conditions, as well as institutional and personal racism present major challenges to the prevention and management of disease and to achieve overall well-being.” She said universal health coverage is a broad term subject to many interpretations and does not necessarily guarantee access to care or to quality of care. That’s why groups such as the one that met on Friday must push to get very specific language included in future legislation.
Durrell Fox (pictured) said, contrary to what many people believe was accomplished by the state’s recently adopted law requiring people to have health insurance, “Massachusetts does not have universal health care; we have a health care reform bill that expanded access to care.” He spoke of the need to build broad coalitions and “solid partnerships” that could move the struggle for true universal coverage forward.
After the panelists’ short presentations, the 50 other attendees held animated discussions at their tables, writing down on index cards questions they had about how to reach the goal stated at the outset. Staff members from the Universal Health Care Foundation (UHCF) collected the questions, which will be used to promote discussion in future forums.
Some of the concerns overheard as a reporter wandered from one table to another were: the need to broaden outreach to build a truly massive, representative movement for health care reform; the need to improve health education in both schools and communities; how to reduce barriers in health care settings, including language barriers; how to reduce pollution in communities of color overburdened with toxics-generating industrial facilities such as power plants; how to open more health-related occupations to a wider range of individuals, and how to make health care professionals more responsive to the realities of people of color.
An overriding theme seemed to be the need to create healthy communities, in order to lessen the need for medical intervention across the board.
Frances Padilla, a UHCF staffer, summed up her table’s discussion this way: “We need to connect the dots between movements — health, education, housing, environmental justice. What ties them all together is poverty and racism and the lack of a voice.”
The panel reconvened and was asked by moderator Jacqui Lindsay (pictured above with UHCF President Juan Figueroa) to propose concrete steps for moving ahead. De Jesus urged that black and Latino leaders from across the state come together to devise joint strategies and cautioned against assuming beforehand “we are all on the same page” when it comes to exactly what should be done.
Rawlings called forcefully for “a change of leadership in Washington,” but went on to say that none of the leading Democratic presidential contenders has any language about racial disparities in their proposed health reform plans. “Put money in the front end to create healthy communities,” he urged, and the country wouldn’t have to spend so much taking care of people — disproportionately people of color — after they become sick.
Fox said that having specific language about eliminating racial disparities in the next health reform bill in the Connecticut General Assembly, along with enforcement mechanisms, are the keys to success.
(Note: Both the Universal Health Care Foundation and the Community Foundation contribute money to the Online Journalism Project, the not-for-profit organization that publishes the Independent.)
Great -- incompetent government moving in on another sector. Who in his right mind could possibly believe, after all the governmental disasters of the past decade, that government could possibly succeed in the monumental undertaking of socialized health care? Another disaster in the making. REJECT IT.