Health Affairs

Here are some recent foundation blog posts that caught my eye. The subjects are varied, so there is something for everybody to read!

Environmental Health; Disaster Planning

On April 29 Lauren Linville, a communications associate with the Health and Environmental Funders Network (HEFN), wrote on its Giving Insight blog about lessons learned during Hurricane Sandy. In “Six Months Later,” Linville relays comments from groups out in the field about challenges, opportunities, and best practices; the comments were made during calls hosted by the Center for Disaster Philanthropy and the Council of New Jersey Grantmakers. Read about the challenges of mold in homes and worries about toxic chemicals in storm water. With hurricane season starting in June, the advice for foundations and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) on when and what to fund is timely.

Patient-Centered Care

Adrian Sieff, an assistant director at the Health Foundation (London, England), writes about “Shared Decision Making: Whose Life Is It Anyway?” In this April 10 post, he notes, “It is part of the clinical culture to fix.” However, he inquires, “What if we taught healthcare professionals that their job is to find out what matters to the patient, to find a solution together that works for the patient and to support them to make it happen?” He includes interesting examples of decisions and links to reports from the Health Foundation as well as the UK-based King’s Fund.

Health Policy and Sequestration

The Colorado Health Foundation’s Health Relay blog published an April 25 post by its editorial manager, Bob Mook, called “Policy Speakout: Sequestration and Health in Colorado.” As he points out, “For most people, life as they know it seems to be carrying on” in spite of the “massive sequestration” cuts that became effective on March 1. However, many economists warn that these arbitrary cuts “will hurt the economy.” He lists health-related examples, such as 2 percent reductions in Medicare payments to health professionals and cuts in funding for community health centers. Although the focus of his post is Colorado, I found his concise explanations helpful. The general information about what is being cut and what is being spared seems to be applicable to other states. (The numbers of people and dollar figures will vary, of course. See this White House map I found.) As an example of what is being spared, Mook notes that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is exempt from sequestration cuts. Read the rest of this entry »

I covered the Grantmakers In Health annual meeting in San Francisco in March. This meeting is always a wonderful occasion for me to meet or reacquaint myself with foundation staffers from around the United States.

In this round-up post, I mention some interesting points made by various speakers at the event, which had some 550 attendees this year. These quick thoughts come from what I jotted down in my “reporter’s notebook,” as Katie Couric used to say. I think that even two months later, a few points made at this meeting are still useful to blog about!

After the Boston Marathon bombing, Nicole Lurie’s work remains particularly important.

Nicole Lurie, assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), was the opening plenary speaker on March 13 at the Grantmakers In Health meeting. Her topic was “Community Resilience and Disaster Response.” Disasters here would include hurricanes, oil spills, tornadoes, earthquakes, and more.

Her office is the federal government’s lead agency for national policy on public health emergencies, with additional responsibility for the advanced development and procurement of drugs for use during disasters, for federal medical response assistance to states during disasters, as well as for hospitals’ and community health systems’ preparedness. And Lurie pointed out that there are many types of “resilience” needed in a disaster: (1) physical resilience (of buildings, for example); (2) economic resilience—during a recession, for example; and (3) psychological resilience of workers and area residents—this type is often overlooked after a disaster.

Planning for chronic care needs is also important, Lurie pointed out. Obese patients, for example, are hard to move, so special equipment to help would need to be in place. Local officials also need to figure out where patients with chronic illness who need oxygen would go during a power outage.

Health care facilities have many challenges during a disaster: lack of electrical power, evacuation of patients, and the psychological effects of the disaster on their workforce. Most hospitals are in “pretty good shape,” Lurie commented. But many nursing homes and dialysis centers are not so well prepared. Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s note: Additional coauthors of this blog post are Jennifer Chubinski, director of community research, and Ann Barnum, senior program officer, substance use disorders, at The Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati.

In the United States, eighteen states and Washington, D.C., have passed laws to legalize marijuana for medical purposes. Six states have defeated legislation to legalize marijuana.

During the 2013 legislative session, the Kentucky Senate also considered legalizing marijuana for medical purposes. According to the 2012 Kentucky Health Issues Poll (KHIP), 45 percent of Kentucky adults said voters should decide whether marijuana is legal. However, allowing voters in the Bluegrass state to decide the issue would complicate the current (prescription) drug approval and regulation process.

Many Kentucky adults think voters should decide whether marijuana is legal. Most favor marijuana as medicine; other uses for marijuana are not popular, though.

KHIP asked several questions about whom Kentucky adults think should decide whether marijuana should be legalized in Kentucky for medical and/or recreational purposes. While many polls have asked about the legalization of marijuana, the authors do not know of other polls that have asked ordinary people if they should be able to vote on marijuana legalization.

More than four in ten adults (45 percent) say voters should decide if marijuana is legal. Six percent of respondents say that physicians should decide whether marijuana is legal, even though that was not one of the possible responses to the original survey question. Read the rest of this entry »