2008 Annual Networking Meeting Policy/Advocacy Workshops: Health Disparities Efforts
Notes on Discussion
Opportunity Agenda: Brian Smedley discussed current projects and potential projects which could be available that are of focus nationally and in selected states. This group discussed several considerations to help facilitate joint work:
- It would help to have a structured way in place to involve scholars during their post-doctoral training.
- Memorandums of understanding to lay out expectations would be helpful to facilitate projects. Community Campus Partnerships for Health (CCPH) has example MOUs on their website which might be helpful (www.ccph.info)
- Scholars will need to produce products and peer reviewed articles will be best. The biggest impact is the journal and peer review.
- This leads to another question that will need to be considered: who owns the data. This should be part of the MOU discussion.
Working With the Hill, Portia Cole and Roberta Downing discussed their roles in advancing health disparities legislation on Capitol Hill – particularly in the Senate. Emily Ihara shared a "tool kit" and a list of resources scholars can use in thinking about policy activities. Natasha Williams discussed her work with prison re-entry in various capacities – on the Hill, as an academic, and now as a practicing lawyer/lobbyist.
Participants identified several ways that Kellogg Health Scholars, as research investigators, can contribute to policy/advocacy efforts:
- Develop "policy profiles" or "policy briefs" with recommendations that can be shared with policymakers
- Establish relationships with policymakers, in order to be called upon as experts, or to solicit letters of support from policymakers to accompany grant applications
- Familiarize yourself with pending legislation (such as S. 1576, pending health disparities legislation, to identify areas of interest and align research with this legislative agenda)
- Review current grant opportunities to identify areas of research interest
- Contact the Office of Minority Health in your state to learn what grants have been awarded and have garnered the most successful outcomes – analyze and submit this information to state legislature to inform policymaking
- Review the Senate HELP Committee priorities – to align your research with its agenda (could also do this in the House Energy & Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Health)
- Look at the topics of upcoming hearings; review submitted testimony from past hearings and identify gaps in the knowledge and research that need to be addressed
- Review the Senate HELP Committee membership and see if any members are from your state – if so, develop relationships via email, visits, etc – position yourself to serve as a resource to the staff
- It is important to have face-to-face meetings whenever possible to cement relationships with staff – you can learn more about the atmosphere and context than you can over the phone
- Write concise one pagers to use in visits, and prepare talking points to guide your discussion with policymakers so your thoughts are crystallized
Praxis - Report Card, We reviewed the health justice report card tool: Some of the data on this tool could use assistance in terms of national datasets by race and county, i.e. low birth rate as opposed to infant mortality.
How can researchers see using this website.
- Community organizations could use this for their grant proposals to make powerful statements to funders.
- Could drill down and lay on more local data on top of this that would serve questions relevant to policy makers.
- Also could use this to track change in indicators over time.
- Could be use to make comparisons between counties of interest.
- Could geocode national data and add it to this report card.
- Using this data along with the diversitydata.org website (one limitation is that this website is by Metropolitan Area)
- Organizations contact Praxis for help with research questions. There are so many issues that folks on the ground need help with. A scholar could work with Praxis to build links with people in communities and work on research questions from their perspective. It would be a great experience.
- Researchers with areas of expertise could help with policy and model policies to add to this website for communities.
- A potential project for a scholar might be to work with Praxis to design and test pilot an evaluation tool of this website. The tool could be shopped around, test run. The evaluation could be on the web and it would create a dataset that would be useful to Praxis and get data about use of this tool.
- Could work with a community partner or local advocacy group to gather local data that could be overlaid on this county data and submitted to a practice journal and policymakers.
- Get experience as part of their local or primary project
- It doesn’t matter who gets elected, we have a lot of work to do. There is no candidate who is supporting a single payer. There is little debate about the need beyond health care and health insurance to impact health disparities.
Community Health Center and Researcher Opportunities to Reduce Health Disparities
Attendance: In addition to the four speakers, there were 10 attendees including KHSP alums, finishing and entering scholars, site representatives and a federal official who works with health centers:
Lee Bone, co-director of Johns Hopkins site
Lisa Rosas, entering scholar at UCSF
Carlotta Arthur, alumna from Harvard now at Mellon Foundation
Tony Omojasola, entering scholar at MD Anderson
Alex Lightfoot
Jim Amell, finishing scholar
Deonne Smith, finishing scholar at USC
Angelica Herrerra, finishing scholar at MD Anderson
Gina Evans, finishing scholar at MD Anderson
Dr. Calvo (did not get his first name), research/quality improvement official from HRSA, HHS
Several offered their own experiences with the centers and the entering scholars expressed interest in health center-based research. This might include health centers as CBPR sites/case studies (they are all governed by consumer-majority boards — the only federal program and the only large public or private health care network with such a requirement — and they are geared to consider and act on social and environmental determinants of health beyond personal medical care); health centers as gateways to specific communities (e.g. migrant farm workers, immigrant groups, homeless people); or more quantitative analysis of aggregate data from the centers and the populations they serve.
Future Participation: Michelle encouraged KHSP scholars who want to do research with health centers to use NACHC as their first stop. It’s a national organization representing the centers; also has links to state level associations of health centers. NACHC can advise researchers on how to foster collaboration, share and gather data that may already be available, recommend centers or groups of centers appropriate to the research topic, serve as liaison and help establish trust.
She emphasized that researchers should work with the centers rather than just asking for data, use existing data wherever possible, and recognize the burden that data collection can pose to the organization and the community.
NACHC does not have money to fund scholars’ research but they will write letters of support to potential funders and occasionally, depending on the topic, may partner with a particular researcher.
Look for information on NACHC’s website (www.NACHC.com) or from Michelle (MProser@NACHC.com). NACHC will soon be posting an online tool kit aimed at health centers which will include information on how to find partners with research expertise, understanding CBPR, and building research infrastructure and know-how.
