Uncomfortable Truths — What Covid-19 Has Revealed about Chronic-Disease Care in America |
A new article by Marshall Chin (CHAS Fellow and Richard Parrillo Family Professor of Healthcare Ethics in the Department of Medicine) illustrates how the U.S. healthcare system changed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic – routine in-person visits for chronic diseases plummeted, telehealth use skyrocketed, and lucrative elective procedures like join replacement were postponed. During this time, marginalized populations suffered higher rates of morbidity from COVID-19 and survival rates were lower in low-income areas with underresourced hospitals. Chin writes that the COVID-19 pandemic urges us to step back and look at the uncomfortable truths about our chronic disease systems, which are based on tradition, self-interest, and revenue generation, rather than the needs and health of people. In this article, Chin highlights and elaborates on strategies to improve chronic disease care that have been reinforced by the COVID-19 pandemic: Support for health of diverse patients and communities; Prevention of chronic disease, promotion of health, and care for patients with chronic disease using primary care teams, with access to specialty services as needed; Fulfillment of system-level health and social needs; Integration of human touch, relationships, and the convenience of technology; and flexible payment mechanisms that support advancement of population health and health equity. Read the complete article below.
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Linking Knowledge with Action When Engagement is Out of Reach: Three Contextual Features of Effective Public Health Communication |
Scientific research has produced a wealth of knowledge on evidence-based practices and policies with the potential to solve many public health challenges. However, significant barriers prevent members of the policy community and general public from accessing and using this knowledge in their decision-making. This publication, coauthored by Alan Zarychta (CHAS Fellow and Assistant Professor at the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice), notes that practitioners and scholars promote direct engagement between policymakers, health workers, and researchers to overcome barriers, but opportunities for such direct-engagement are rare in public health settings. Alternatively, the researchers address the knowledge-to-action gap with a mid-range approach that explores how researchers, without direct engagement, can most effectively share new findings with large numbers of local-level policymakers, civil servants, and practitioners. This study draws on the theory that policy actors will trust and utilize research findings when they perceive them to be salient, credible, and legitimate. The researchers examine the conditions facilitating greater uptake of new knowledge among health officials in Honduras when engagement is out of reach and they are instead exposed to new ideas through written mass communication. They round that messages from a technocratic sender based on statistical evidence improved perceptions of salience, credibility, and legitimacy (SCL). They also found that perceptions of SCL operate as joint mediators between knowledge and action, and several individual characteristics also influence whether officials trust research findings enough to apply them in their health policies. Read the complete article below.
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11/02/2021 @12:30 pm CDT
Janelle R. Goodwill, PhD
Crown Family School
11/09/2021 @12:30 pm CDT
Alida Bouris, PhD
Crown Family School
11/16/2021 @12:30 pm CDT
Danielle Raudenbush, PhD
UC San Diego
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Invisible Visits: Black Middle-Class Women in the American Healthcare System
Dr. Tina Sacks, AM ’98, PhD ’13 Assistant Professor
School of Social Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley
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