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January 7, 2022

Advancing Covid Vaccination Equity

Rapid-Response Study Finds Proven Strategies


What are effective strategies for increasing Covid-19 vaccine access and building trust in lower-income minority communities, which have felt the disproportionate burden of illness and death? Several successful approaches have been used by federally qualified health centers (FQHCs), nonprofit health systems that receive federal funding to provide primary care to medically underserved communities, finds a study by Hastings Center research scholars Carolyn Neuhaus and Nancy Berlinger and project manager/research assistant Danielle Pacia conducted with colleagues at Albany Medical College and SUNY Upstate Medical University. For example, FQHC’s reduced barriers to vaccination, including complicated online appointment systems and lack of transportation, by offering phone and in-person appointment scheduling and providing transportation assistance and pop-up/mobile vaccination clinics in convenient locations. “FQHC strategies could serve as a national blueprint for how to support just vaccine allocation and improve health equity,” concludes the study, which was published in the Journal of Internal Medicine. Read the article.

 

Limiting the Consequences--Clinical and Financial--of Controversial Alzheimer's Disease Drug

Most experts have raised concerns about the safety and effectiveness of Aduhelm, the Alzheimer’s drug approved last year, as well as the enormous financial consequences, which could add billions of dollars to Medicare spending each year, writes Michael Gusmano, a Hastings Center research scholar and professor of health policy at Lehigh University, in Medpage Today. But there is hope that private and public payers may limit the potential problems by refusing to cover the drug. Medicare’s decision is especially important. Read the article.
 

Speakers Finalized for January 19-20 Health Equity Summit


Reed Tuckson, co-founder of the Black Coalition against Covid and managing director of Tuckson Health Connections, will join Hastings Center President Mildred Solomon to open “Righting the Wrongs: Tackling Health Inequities,” a two-day  health equity summit. Keynote speakers are Isabel Wilkerson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of the best-selling books Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents and The Warmth of Other Suns; David Williams, an internationally recognized social scientist; Daniel Dawes, a leader in the movement to advance health equity and a key figure in shaping the Mental Health Parity Act and the Affordable Care Act; and Richard Rothstein, author of The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. The event be held virtually Wednesday, January 19 and Thursday, January 20. Learn more and register.

 

Upcoming Events


"Righting the Wrongs: Tackling Health Inequities," a Hastings Center event in collaboration with the Association of American Medical Colleges, American Nurses Association, American Medical Association, American Hospital Association, and the ABIM Foundation. January 19th & 20th, 2022.
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