U.S. Congressman John P Sarbanes (D-Md), who serves on the Health subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee, spoke about health care reform and health disparity at the 24th annual BEYA STEM Global Competitiveness Conference in Baltimore, Maryland, on Feb. 18.
Congressman Sarbanes’ committee was one of three committees in the House of Representatives that drafted the health care bill. He talked about the importance of health education and preventive care.
“By not focusing as much as we can on preventive care, and providing the sorts of interventions and health education, and other things on the front-end, it results in huge costs to our system on the back-end,” Sarbanes said.
He said from the onset they have tried to make sure the health disparity issue is not just an afterthought.
“It needs to be woven to every dimension of the health reform effort and focus on every part of the health care system. It’s only in that way that we are really going to address the issue and make the changes that we all want to see,” he said.
Sarbanes mentioned few ways the House of Representatives is seeking to accomplish and woven the concern over health disparity into the reform effort.
“Keep in mind that the concern we have is the disparity when it comes to disease burden – when you look across the population, the disparity in terms of health outcomes, [and] the disparity in terms of access to coverage and to care. These are all critical problems,” Sarbanes said.
“The Bill is focused very much on how when we go to strengthen the health care workforce, we are addressing the issue of disparity within the workforce, and these are very striking when you look at them across the country.”
Sarbanes added that he pays close attention to the workforce issue.
“Many of the provisions that I pay the most attention to as the bills come forward have to do with strengthening that pipeline because many of you know that we already have severe shortages in certain categories of caregivers,” Sarbanes said.
He mentioned shortages across the board when you look at primary care physicians, nurses and certain other categories of caregivers.
Sarbanes said while effort is being made to strengthen those areas, it is also imperative to keep in mind the need to address disparity questions.
“We have to think about how the health care system can reach out better to the community and be more embracing, and offer more opportunity for coverage, more opportunity for treatment [and] better outcomes,” Sarbanes said.
Sarbanes said this can be achieved by looking at the make-up of the workforce and design it in a way and emphasize the notion that this has to be a diverse workforce in every single respect.
He said there are a number of different task forces which are going to be empowered to address issues of clinical prevention, and community preventive services.
“In each instance,” said Sarbanes, “the Bill that we have put together on the House side seeks to weave into those task forces.”
He said there is a new program—a community–level preventive health grants program—which is being created.
At least half of the funding for this program will address its proposals that have the primary purpose of dealing health disparities across the system, Sarbanes said.
“Absolutely critical is the collection of data which shines a light on this disparity issue and we have not done that very well at the federal level up till now,” Sarbanes said.
“And so part of what is containing in the Bill, and I am very excited about, is attention to gathering of this data so that we can see where the gaps are and we can move to address them.”
Sarbanes said there are scholarship programs that are particularly focused on minority candidates who are going into the health workforce and these are being boosted inside the legislation.
“I am very optimistic that this new attention being brought to the health disparity issue is going to continue and be maintained,” Sarbanes said.
Also see:
· Panel Of Experts Discuss Innovations In Science At The BEYA STEM Global Competitiveness Conference And Highlight The Importance Of Health Care IT
· 24th BEYA STEM Global Competitiveness Conference Opens Doors Of Opportunities In STEM Programs And Celebrates Excellence
