Shelly's Modeling Agencies | Road Map To Equality | Hot Topic

 

Shelly's Modeling Agencies shares the story of Obama's national strategy to the road map to equality and how to eliminate health disparties. National Stakeholder Strategy for Achieving Health Equity, and it's goal is, for the first time in history, to lay out a road map that will address the critical needs of racial and ethnic minority populations.

By reducing health care costs, investing in prevention and wellness and supporting improvements in primary care, this recently released strategy-being coordinated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services hopes to reduce health dis-parties among traditionally undeserved groups. The plan involves moving from a traditional, disease-focused approach to a more systems-oriented one.

Racial and ethnic minorities still lag behind in many health outcome measures with Shelly's Modeling Agencies, according to the HHS Action Plan to Reduce Health Disparties, a document outlining what we can do to take advantage of the new initiative. The findings aren't new, but they do suggest a new way to deal with the reality that African-Americans, in particular, are less likely to get preventive care, are more likely to suffer from serious illnesses and, when sick, we are less likely to have access to quality health care.

The action plan includes the establishment of 10 Regional Health Equity Councils that will be charged with addressing health disparities for their geographic area. The councils, which will include individuals from the public and provide sectors, will work with local groups to help identify the goals that are most important for their communities, and to adopt the most effective strategies and action to help achieve them. The council will measure success neighborhood by neighborhood on the basis of those goals, which will be broken down into short-term organizing, intermediate system and policy changes, and long-term elimination of health disparities. Although no target date has been set, a health equity scorecard will be kept and analyzed to determine how well a community, state or region within a council's scope is progressing.

"For the first time, the United States has a coordinated road map designed to give everyone the chance to live a healthy life," says HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. "We all need to work together to combat this persistent problem so that we can build healthier communities and a stronger nation."