- In Rural Texas, ERs Are Facing a Growing Mental Health Crisis
- Sage Memorial Hospital in Navajo Nation Constructs New Facility to Improve Health Care
- How the State, Tribes and Federal Government Are Working to Curb SD's Syphilis Epidemic
- Rural Children Struggle to Access Hospital Services, Say Researchers
- RPHARM Program Fulfills Need for Rural Pharmacists
- A Pilot Program in Rural Vermont Hopes to Build a Blueprint for Substance Abuse Recovery
- Farmers Don't Do Mental Health
- Biden-Harris Administration Announces Critical More Than $1.5 Billion State and Tribal Opioid Response Funding Opportunities
- Outlining the Intersection between Health Care and Missing and Murdered Indigenous People
- USDA Rural Development Seeks Input to Improve Access to Grants and Help More Communities Thrive
- Rural Telehealth Extension Reintroduced in Congress
- The South Was the Center of Rural Population Growth Last Year
- Students From Across the State Emphasized the Need for Mental Health Resources in Rural Alaska During a Conference
- How HHS SUD Confidentiality Regulations Will Impact Rural Providers
- VA Announces Expansion of "Close to Me" Cancer Program as Part of the Cancer Moonshot, Bringing Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment Closer to Thousands of Veterans
Strategies to Prepare for Public Health Emergency Unwinding
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released a “punch list” of strategies states and the U.S. territories can adopt to maintain coverage of eligible individuals as they return to normal operations after the end of the public health emergency. The strategies are organized around seven topics areas:
- strengthening renewal processes
- updating mailing addresses
- improving consumer outreach, communication, and assistance
- promoting seamless coverage transitions
- improving coverage retention
- addressing strains on the eligibility and enrollment workforce
- enhancing oversight of eligibility and enrollment operations
In the resource, CMS also flagged strategies expected to have the biggest impact on mitigating coverage losses. https://www.medicaid.gov/state-resource-center/downloads/strategies-for-covrg-of-indiv.pdf
New Bulletin with Oral Health Resources Published
The National Maternal and Child Oral Health Resource Center (OHRC) recently published the “Oral Health Resource Bulletin: Volume 47.” The bulletin contains briefs, guidelines, manuals, standards, reports, and videos published in 2020 and 2021. Topics include the COVID-19 pandemic, data and surveillance, policy, professional and education practice, program development, public awareness and education, and systems integration. Resources include a toolkit on community water fluoridation, a user’s guide on teledentistry, and more.
Data Estimates from National Survey of Children’s Health Released
The Data Resource Center for Child and Adolescent Health (DRC), a project of the Child and Adolescent Health Measurement Initiative (CAHMI), under a cooperative agreement with the Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA) Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB), announced the release of the combined “2019-2020 National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) Child and Family Health Measures.” The combined 2019-2020 NSCH is the fourth multi-year dataset since the redesign of the NSCH in 2016 and includes data from 72,210 children ages 0-17 years. The combined 2019-2020 NSCH downloadable data sets and codebooks with constructed variables displayed in the DRC Interactive Data Query will be available in early 2022.
COVID-19 Reporting Revised to Better Track Trends
The Pennsylvania Department of Health will now provide weekly summaries of COVID-19 cases, deaths, hospitalizations and vaccine data, in addition to their daily updates of the interactive dashboards on the website to provide a clearer picture of what is happening than daily snapshots alone provide. The data reveals:
- Between November 29 and December 5, almost 422,000 vaccine doses were administered across the commonwealth; nearly half were boosters and about 76,000 were to children ages 5-11.
- According to the Pennsylvania Department of Health weekly report, this is a 47.2% increase in vaccines administered from the previous week.
- As of Tuesday afternoon, there were 4,298 people hospitalized with COVID-19 across the state.
- In the past seven days, the number of patients hospitalized for COVID-19 increased by 9%, the state averaged 7,338 new cases per day and a total of 654 deaths were reported.
- To date, there have been almost 1.8 million cases of COVID-19 in Pennsylvania and 34,107 virus-related deaths.
Note: the state’s vaccine data includes information from all counties except Philadelphia, which operates as a separate vaccine jurisdiction.
Acting Pennsylvania Health Secretary to Resign December 31, 2021
Alison Beam will resign as acting Pennsylvania health secretary at the end of the year. https://www.inquirer.com/news/pennsylvania/alison-beam-resign-pa-health-secretary-keara-klinepeter-20211213.html
Pennsylvania to Fund Sexual Violence Prevention at Colleges and Universities
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf announced that 34 institutions of higher education will receive up to $30,000 in funding to protect students from sexual violence. You can learn more about It’s On Us PA and add you name to the statewide pledge here. You can also read more about school-specific initiatives.
HIV Discrimination, Privacy and Confidentiality: Impact on the Delivery of Oral Healthcare
The New England AIDS Education and Training Center is hosting a webinar: “HIV Discrimination, Privacy and Confidentiality: Impact on the Delivery of Oral Healthcare” on January 11, 2021 at 11 am ET. Persons with HIV are protected by a variety of state and federal laws against discrimination, especially in places of public accommodation. The 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act classified this as a national mandate to eliminate discrimination against persons with disabilities. Speakers will discuss the impact on the delivery of oral healthcare during the webinar.
To register for the webinar: https://www.neaetc.org/events/view/19571?mc_cid=c8f998257c&mc_eid=3de0fb2a18
Dental Public Health Leadership
The American Institute of Dental Public Health (AIDPH) is developing a leadership program aimed at rising oral health professionals seeking formal training and support. The goal is to tailor the programming to the needs of the community with an intention to launch in the spring of 2022. In order to design curriculum and frame this experience, they are requesting feedback through a brief survey. Click the following link to complete the survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/F3M3WJJ
Cholesterol Management: Improving Patient Adherence to Statin Therapy
Quality Insights has developed their 2021 Cholesterol Management Practice Module https://improve.qualityinsights.org/Files/Projects/PA-DOH/PA_CholesterolModule_WFM_FINAL_508.aspx that offers a variety of strategies and tools care teams can utilize to improve patient-adherence outcomes. Review the module and visit the links below to learn more:
- Updated for 2021: Care Team Interventions to Implement American Heart Association Cardio Vascular Disease Primary Prevention Guidelines https://mcusercontent.com/3c9fc473fc413830f0c7ccfaf/files/f56d7db0-0ea3-13da-6429-f3684eb6b434/Care_Team_Workflow_PA_2021_508.pdf
- White Paper-Team Up for Quality Care: The Role of Primary Care Teams in Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease https://improve.qualityinsights.org/CMSPages/GetFile.aspx?guid=e33d8be5-de73-48bc-af66-70d461c5b9d8
- National Association of Community Health Centers: Statin Therapy for High-Risk Patients Provider Training Package https://www.nachc.org/clinical-matters/nachc-million-hearts-initiative/#highrisk
- American College of Cardiology Low-density Lipoprotein – Cholesterol (LDL-C) Manager App: A free app that guides clinicians through one continuous lipid-lowering process by linking three tools – the Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease (ASCVD) Risk Estimator, Statin Intolerance app, and the Lipid Lowering Therapy Pathway tool – all based on up-to-date ACC clinical policy. https://www.acc.org/LDLCmanager
- The Adherence Estimator: a patient-centered tool designed to help care teams gauge a patients’ likelihood of adhering to newly prescribed oral medication for certain chronic, asymptomatic conditions https://www.ehidc.org/sites/default/files/resources/files/Adherence%20Estimator%20Kit_%20Interactive%20PDF.pdf
CDC Correction Shows Fever Pennsylvanians Vaccinated
A data correction made by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week made a dent in the state’s perceived progress on vaccinating the adult population. Under a data adjustment disclosed by the Pennsylvania Department of Health (DOH), the number of people considered fully vaccinated dropped from 73.7% of those 180and-older to 68.9% because of a reduction of about 1.2 million doses after removal of duplicate information and correction of data on first, second and booster doses.