POLICY CENTER

Notes

HEALTH POLICY News

SCHOLAR Spotlight

RobertWood

JohnsonFoundation

Center forHealth Policyat Meharry Medical College

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012

PHYSICIANS’ PRESCRIPTION: ADDRESS UNMET SOCIAL NEEDSA recent Robert Wood Johnson Foundation survey of physicians indicated that four out of five physicians agreed that unmet social needs are connected to declining health for many Americans. With a substantial grant from !e Physi-cians Foundation Health Leads, a Boston organization, trained college student volunteers in five cities to “assist” physicians to “prescribe” food, housing and fuel assistance, or other resources for their patients – just as they do medication.

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COMBATTING OBESITY AMONG LATINO CHILDRENIn Texas and across the nation, half of Latinos born today will develop diabetes. Salud America, !e Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Research Network to Prevent Obesity among Latino Children, engaged more than 1,800 researchers, com-munity leaders, policymakers and other stakeholders to increase the number of researchers and advocates seeking environmental and policy solutions to address Latino childhood obesity.

View full article here.

Class Matters: Achieving Health Equity by Tackling PovertyWritten by Health Policy Scholars Orville Bignall II, Kevin Blythe, Kenisha Cantrell, Eleanor Fleming, and Piia Hanson

Research shows that poverty may have a greater impact on health disparities than race. Research continues to point to a declining significance for race and instead suggests class and socioeconomic status as more e"cacious determinants of health status within the community. Childhood economic status, not race, more directly correlates with increased risks of chronic medical conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Socioeconomic status is a more easily defined metric for promoting health equity. It allows for specific environmental and social determinants of health to be more directly addressed.

!e recent global financial crisis has shed light on America’s evaporating “middle class” and income inequality has been implicated as a direct culprit of our nation’s worsening health status. As opposed to race, a new focus on addressing socioeconomic status allows clearly identifiable aspects of a community’s infrastructure to be leveraged to improve their health outcomes. Further, socioeconomic status

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POLICY CENTER NOTES JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012

PUBLICATIONS Brown, Tyson H. 2011. “The Intersection and Accumulation of Racial and Gender Inequality: Black Women’s Wealth.” The Review of Black Political Economy. Forthcoming.

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is a more easily measurable characteristic than the subjective category of race. Race today is informed not by the scientific process, but by social politics; it is an enormously complex and variable idea, grossly understated by the five standard choices often o#ered. !erefore it makes little clinical sense to base treatment and therapeutic conclusions on a subjective, self-reported variable such as race.

For decades, sociologists such as William Julius Wilson and political scientists such as Carol Swain have suggested a declining significance of race and growing influence of class and socioeconomic status as a way of critiquing social policy. By shifting our focus to class and the e#ects of poverty, these scholars have suggested that institutional and structural burdens have created the stressors that result in the social disparities. It is our recommendation that e#orts to eliminate health disparities focus on addressing poverty rather race.

Excerpted from Class Matters: Achiev-ing Health Matters by Tackling Poverty http://www.meharryhealthpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/Class-Matters1.pdf

!e Center for Health Policy’s Scholars and Fellows are a dynamic group of students from Meharry and Vanderbilt who explore health policy as it relates to their primary fields of study. Read more about three Scholars and Fellows below.

Eleanor Fleming, PhD, DDS, a member of the first cohort of Health Policy Scholars, was selected to serve as an Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Of-ficer at the Center for Disease Control. Dr. Fleming received a doctoral degree in Political Science from Vanderbilt University and graduated from Meharry’s School of Dentistry with a Doctor of Dental Surgery in May 2011. Fleming is the Center’s first scholar to secure a post graduate position, and most notably, a position in which she will draw on experiences gained as a Health Policy Scholar.

Piia Hanson, MSPH is among the first group of graduates in the Health Policy Scholars’ Program. Ms. Hanson is now the Women and Infant Health Program Manager at the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs (AMCHP) in Washington, D.C. In this new position, Ms. Hanson is respon-sible for the development, implementation, and evaluation of program and policy activities related to women’s and infant health and maternal and child health data and assessment through cooperative agreements.

Sydney Jones, RWJF/Meharry Health Policy Fellow is a second year doctoral student in the Political Science department at Vanderbilt Univer-sity. During the summer of 2011, he experienced the life of a health policy scholar abroad as an intern in the British Parliament in London, England. During his time in Parliament, Mr. Jones shadowed Parlia-ment member Rosie Cooper of the Labor Party and member of the Select Health Committee. !e Health Committee provides oversight and accountability on health and health care issues in the United Kingdom.

POLICY CENTER NOTES JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012

Ross LE, Fletcher A, Anderson MC, Meade, SAM, Powe, BD, Howard DL. “Complementary and Alternative Medicine Use among Men with a History of Prostate Cancer” Journal of Cultural Diversity: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 18(4), Dec. 2011.

DIRECTOR’S Desk

As the Center embarks on its third year, I am delighted to report that our objectives have been achieved with tremendous success.

!ey include:development of a program focused on the recruitment, selection, and matriculation of African American and Hispanic students interested in health policy through collaborative PhD programs in economics, politcal science, and sociology at Vanderbilt University (VU); development of a scholars’ program in health policy that leads to the award of the certificate in health policy for current MMC students;development of a visiting professor program in health policy that involves nationally-regarded faculty; implementation of a pilot project mini-grant program that supports health policy research for both MMC and VU faculty; establishment of a prominent National Advisory Board.

!e Center will continue to grow and thrive as we fulfull our mission to increase the diversity of health policy leaders in the social, behavioral, and health sciences, (particularly economics, sociology, and political science) who will one day influence health policy at the national level. To that end, we are committed to advancing key initiatives such as the new Health Policy Professional Development Program and the Health Policy Alumni Program. !ese are student-focused initiatives aiming to develop a new generation of national health policy leaders.

We invite you to peruse our first edition of Policy Center Notes. !is month, we spotlight several Scholars and Fellows who are already on the path to becoming health policy leaders.We also look at the impact of class on health disparities. !is and all bi-monthly editions of Policy Center Notes will highlight opportunities and resources available to health policy enthusiasts.

We value your support of the RWJF Center for Health Policy.

Daniel L. Howard, PhDExecutive DirectorRobert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy at Meharry Medical College

Policy Center Notes is published bi-monthly by the Robert Wood Johnson Founda-tion Center for Health Policy at Meharry Medical College. !e mission of the RWJF Center for Health Policy at Meharry Medical College is to provide leadership in health policy education along with research and reform on a national, state and local level while continually supporting the historic mission of Meharry Medical College to improve the health and health care of minority and underserved communities. For more information visit www.meharryhealthpolicy.org

2012 Annual Meeting Call for Abstracts Now Open!e American Public Health Association is announcing the Call for Abstracts for the 2012 Annual Meeting. !e theme is Prevention and Wellness Across the Lifespan. Abstracts in all areas of public health are encouraged along with papers that focus on the Annual Meeting theme. All abstracts must be submitted online by February 6-10, 2012 depending on the Section, SPIG, Caucus or Forum to which the topic is focused. All submissions will end at 11:59 pm (PST) on the due date listed on the Call for Abstracts. No late submissions will be accepted. APHA membership is not required for submission, but does imply a commitment to make the presentation at the annual meeting October 27-31 in San Francisco, CA.

To submit abstract, click here: http://apha.confex.com/apha/140am/oasys.epl

National Scholars Seminar Series Leading experts lecture on provocative health and health policy issues. !e Seminar Series, a course for RWJF Health Policy Scholars, is also open to the general public.

February 1, 2012 12:00-1:30 pm MMC, Learning Resource Center, Hall 1

Camara Phyllis Jones, MD, MPH, PhDResearch Director on Social Determinants of Health and Equity Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

National Scholars Seminar Series

February 15, 2012 12:00-1:30 pm MMC, Learning Resource Center, Hall 1

Academy Health’s 2012 National Health Policy Conference February 13-14, 2012Now in its 12th year, the National Health Policy Conference is the nation’s first comprehensive look at the year ahead in health policy, providing an insider’s view into the nation’s health policy agenda. !is conference brings together more than 800 senior health care deci sion makers from academia, government, foundations, hospitals and the health care industry. More information can be found here.

EVENTS & Opportunities

Academy Health’s 2012 National Health Policy Conference The first comprehensive look at year ahead in health policy. February 13-14, 2012 in Washington D.C. For information http://www.academyhealth.org/Events

Senator William Frist, M.D, Physician & Former US SenatorRWJF Center for Health Policy National Advisory Board Member

POLICY CENTER NOTES JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012

SODA TAX WOULD SAVE LIVES AND BILLIONS Over the past 10 years, Americans drank more sugar-sweetened beverages than ever—as much as 13 billion gallons a year—making these drinks arguably, the single largest dietary factor in the current obesity epidemic. In a study conducted at Columbia University Medical Center and the University of California, San Francisco, researchers estimated that a higher, penny-per-ounce tax would result in an approximately 15% reduction in consumption and reduce the prevalence of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

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DIABETES HURTS YOUTH LEARNING AND EARNING Having diabetes can carry many health consequences, but a new study in the January issue of Health A#airs shows that it also highly influences a young person’s ability to complete high school, be employed, and earn a living wage. High school dropout rates among young people with diabetes are six percentage points higher than for young people without the disease. What’s more, young adults with diabetes can expect to earn $160,000 less in wages over their work-ing lives compared to peers without diabetes.

View full article here.

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