The National Rural Health Resource Center’s recently updated Population Health Toolkit — which includes the newest population health data from a half-dozen publicly available data sets — is now available online.

Developed and maintained with support from the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy, the Population Health Toolkit is designed to assist State Offices of Rural Health (SORHs), state Flex Programs and individual health care facilities as they seek to better understand, manage and improve population health in their communities and state.

The toolkit, which was first created in 2016 and is updated annually, includes:

• A population health readiness assessment that allows health care facilities to gauge their preparedness for population health
• Tools and resources to support health care facilities as they build their population health management capabilities
• A web-based dashboard that displays county, state, national and, when available, facility-level data on a range of population health measures, organized into more than a dozen scenarios that explore health conditions, health inequities and the leading causes of death in rural America
• Tutorial videos that offer step-by-step guidance on conducting population health analytics

Explore the Population Health Toolkit

The Population Health Toolkit lets SORHs and state Flex Programs:

• gain a better understanding of local and statewide health patterns by exploring the health needs of individual communities in their state
• gather data on state population health needs that can be included in their upcoming Flex Program applications

SORHs and state Flex Programs are also encouraged to share the toolkit with critical access hospitals and other rural health care providers in their state that can use its features and data to assess their readiness for population health, inform their community health needs assessment process and even compare their facilities’ performance with peers across the state and country.

Have any questions about the Population Health Toolkit? Interested in a walk through of the toolkit? Please contact Tracy Morton, Director of Population Health, at tmorton@ruralcenter.org.
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The Pennsylvania Department of Health is seeking feedback from providers across the state to guide the development of educational materials for communities at-risk of mpox transmission, as well as for providers. The Mpox Outreach & Education (O&E) Materials Questionnaire gives providers and team members the opportunity to provide insight into the types of materials that would be most beneficial for services providers and the communities your teams serve. Additionally, if you feel like materials should include messaging about both mpox and other STIs or HIV, please elaborate on that in the questionnaire as well.

At a 2022 White House conference, the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) made a $24.1 Million commitment to improving nutrition training for medical professionals. Their upcoming National Training Initiative is part of that effort. It offers scholarships for one primary care physician at every FQHC to become certified in lifestyle medicine. Learn more or express interest on ACLM’s site. ACLM also offers a free CME/CE-accredited course on prescribing nutrition — using food as medicine — and other lifestyle modalities. Visit ACLM’s site for information or to register. Up to 5.5 CME/CE available.

Vaccination is one of the most highly effective public health interventions, responsible for saving millions of lives each year. Despite the care taken in the development and deployment of vaccines and their clear and compelling benefit of saving individual lives and improving population health outcomes, an increasing number of people in the US are now declining vaccination for a variety of reasons, ranging from safety concerns to religious beliefs. The situation has now deteriorated to the point that population immunity against some vaccine-preventable infectious diseases is at risk, and thousands of excess deaths are likely to occur this season due to illnesses amenable to prevention or reduction in severity of illness with vaccines. Read more in this Feb. 15 JAMA article.

Thanks to a 2022 law, consumers across the commonwealth have a new option if a healthcare claim is denied. Consumers can now file an online appeal of insurer denials of healthcare coverage to the Pennsylvania Insurance Department (PID) using PID’s new appeal website. Pennsylvania took over the independent external review process from the federal government under Act 46 of 2022, which took effect January 1, 2024. According to PID, only a small number of individuals challenged claim denials in the past three years and a significant number of those appeals resulted in decision reversals. PID encourages individuals who believe that they were inappropriately denied coverage for a service to utilize the new process and appeal the decision.

The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) has approved a request from drug maker Eli Lilly to audit a rural, multi-site community health center regarding how it prevents duplicate discounts on 340B drugs reimbursed under Medicaid managed care. This approval is notable as it is the first time that either a HRSA or manufacturer 340B audit will look at Medicaid managed care drugs. (Previous audits around Medicaid have been limited to fee for service drugs.) The rationale behind HRSA’s change in policy is unclear.

Nationally, over 15 million people have been disenrolled from Medicaid since April 1, 2023 and over 28 million have had their coverage renewed. Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) has published a Medicaid Unwinding Brief that summarizes information gathered from stakeholder interviews to highlight key observations and themes from the field, including perspectives from Pennsylvania. With the growing concern over such large disenrollment numbers, the federal government issued additional guidance with strategies to help states protect coverage and prevent additional procedural terminations.  Pennsylvania has disenrolled more than 575,000 recipients from coverage since April 1, renewed coverage for 1.3 million, and terminated 44% for procedural issues.

Join Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) as she highlights CMS’ key 2023 accomplishments and reviews the 2024 priorities to advance CMS’ Strategic Plan. CMS’s focus for the coming year includes advancing health equity, expanding coverage, and improving health outcomes while engaging communities for input and feedback during the process.  RSVP for the January 23, 1:00 – 2:00 pm call here.