The Connection

A roundup of recent Fund publications, charts, multimedia, and other timely content.

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May 6, 2024

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Bridging Public Health and Social Movements to Drive Change

Public health in the U.S. began with the convergence of broad social movements that led to improvements in living conditions and extended life expectancy. But since drifting away from its social-change roots, public health systems are now chronically underfunded and understaffed, weaknesses that were exposed during the pandemic. On To the Point, Lili Farhang and Julian Drix of Human Impact Partners explore the potential of “bridging” public health and community organizing groups to improve government transparency and accountability and to change policy for the better.

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Rethinking American Health Care by Looking Abroad

Many signs point to a U.S. health care system that’s nearing the breaking point. The debate over how to fix it — health insurance in particular — often swings between the extremes of maintaining an unworkable status quo and adopting a single-payer system. But what if the solution lies elsewhere, in the hybrid approaches taken by other countries? On To the Point, science communicator and health services researcher Aaron Carroll, M.D., discusses findings from his worldwide tour to explore how other high-income nations achieve universal coverage.

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QUIZ

What percentage of the nonelderly adult Medicaid population experienced a substance use or mental health disorder in 2020?

- 5%
- 10%
- 25%
- 40%

Keep scrolling to see if you got it right.

On the Need for Diversity in Medical Illustrations

In medical school, students learning about illness, pathology, and disease are trained almost exclusively on images of white patients. For Nigerian medical student and illustrator Chidiebere Ibe, who launched the world’s largest open-source digital library of medical illustrations featuring people of color, accurate representation is a starting point for health care equity. On The Dose podcast, host Joel Bervell talks to Ibe, the founder of Illustrate Change, about his efforts to make inclusive imagery widely accessible — a critical step toward getting Black patients the health care they deserve.

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Lived Experience Is a Key to Health Equity

As a physician, researcher, and educator, Dr. Cheryl R. Clark wants her students to understand what vision, love, and equity can bring to health care if we prioritize them. On The Dose podcast, Clark talks about how she brings health equity to life, taking medical residents to Mississippi to break bread with the civil rights leaders who founded community health centers. She also discusses her work at the forefront of emancipatory research to connect the dots between academics, clinicians, and communities’ lived experiences.

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Using AI to Advance Equity in Health Care

Artificial intelligence in health care has the potential to improve patient outcomes and efficiencies, but it also risks perpetuating biases that could worsen disparities in already marginalized communities. Enter the A.C.C.E.S.S. AI Model, a new framework designed to engage communities collectively, identify barriers to AI implementation, and uncover opportunities to use AI to advance health equity. In Health Affairs Forefront, former Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellow Zainab Garba-Sani and colleagues write that the model aims to ensure that AI applications are developed and deployed in ways that are beneficial and equitable to all communities.

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Accessible Care for Adults with Disabilities

On May 1, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services finalized a rule that strengthens civil rights protections for people with disabilities ([link removed] ) , including enforceable standards for ensuring medical diagnostic equipment and web content are accessible to all. Commonwealth Fund researchers have identified other strategies health plans and clinics are using to ensure accessible care ([link removed] ) for adults living with physical disabilities, intellectual and developmental disabilities, or serious mental illnesses.

QUIZ: Answer

The answer is D, 40%.

Congress recently approved a legislative package that includes behavioral health reforms aimed at making services more accessible to Medicaid beneficiaries. Read a To the Point post by Dawn Joyce and Lena Marceno to learn about the law’s key provisions ([link removed] ) .

Affordable, quality health care. For everyone.

The Commonwealth Fund, 1 East 75th Street, New York, NY 10021

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