Dear Community:

A sincere thank you to everyone who joined us on Saturday for the Black Women's Health Movement "Just For Us" experience. It was an amazing opportunity to connect and learn together.

I'd also like to announce a new update for one of our most impactful and popular programs. Every day across our community, caregivers show extraordinary love and commitment – helping parents, family members, partners, and neighbors live with dignity as they age. But caregiving can also be physically, emotionally, and mentally demanding. That’s why the Center for Closing the Health Gap is proud to launch our new Caregiver Support Series, a collection of gatherings over the coming months designed specifically for those caring for loved ones age 60 and older.

This series starts on Saturday, March 28 and will connect caregivers with practical tools, helpful resources, and a supportive community of people who understand what they’re experiencing. No one should have to carry the weight of caregiving alone.

At the Health Gap, we believe “We Must Save Us.” Supporting caregivers is one of the most powerful ways we strengthen the health of our entire community. I encourage you to learn more and register for upcoming sessions by clicking here.

Together, we can care for those who care for others. Please help us spread the word and take care of yourselves. Wishing all of you a safe and healthy week ahead!



Renee Mahaffey Harris

President & CEO

Closing the AI benefits gap: Systems design for population health equity

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is currently failing to live up to its potential. Its champions promise that it will make healthcare more effective, efficient, and equitable, thereby improving population health. However, these benefits are not consistently materialising. Examples of AI working effectively at scale remain limited, and even when implementation succeeds, group or population-level improvements in outcomes are often not discernible.

Drawing on the 2024 Global Health in the Age of AI symposium, we argue that this benefits gap stems from two fundamental problems. First, AI is being built on inadequate foundations. Second, AI has been tasked with optimising individual health; a function incapable of improving population outcomes. The benefits gap cannot, therefore, be closed through ad hoc policy interventions designed to address specific implementation barriers. Instead, AI must first be assigned a new population-level function, then robust foundations must be built through systems design to support it. Crucially, both the function and the foundations must be co-created by those most affected by health inequities, working together with frontline health workers, public health practitioners, AI developers, and governance bodies. Only by taking this approach will it be possible to realise AI's population health potential and avoid a disillusionment-driven healthcare-specific AI winter.

New ACP Papers Say Health Care Must Be More Accessible and Inclusive for Patients and Physicians with Disabilities

Two new papers from the American College of Physicians (ACP) address barriers to health care for people with disabilities and offer policy recommendations to make health care and medical education more inclusive and accessible for physicians, medical students and patients. In the papers, ACP says that disability as an aspect of diversity should be considered when making policy decisions, and that implementing the recommendations would improve care for patients with disabilities and ensure a diverse physician workforce reflective of American society.

In order to comprehensively address the issue, ACP released companion papers, “Improving the Health of and Access to Health Care for People with Disabilities: A Position Paper from the American College of Physicians” and “Fostering Support and Inclusion for Physicians, Post-Graduate Trainees, and Medical Students with Disabilities: A Position Paper from the American College of Physicians” today in Annals of Internal Medicine, which are respectively dedicated to health disparities that are experienced by patients with disabilities and barriers to a career experienced by physicians with disabilities.

UConn Health Disparities Institute Leads the Way: Making Moves for Menopause Equity

In a single week, HDI’s Menopause Equity Initiative (MEI) helped shape two key menopause bills at the Connecticut General Assembly. It also brought a groundbreaking documentary on menopause to UConn alums and the broader community for dialogue.

This coordinated push reflects a growing recognition that menopause is not just a private experience but a public health and equity issue.

"When we talk about menopause equity, we’re talking about whether women and people in midlife have access to the information, care, and workplace conditions they need to thrive,” said Trisha Pitter, director of Community Learning and Engagement at HDI. “That requires policy change, provider education, and spaces where people can finally say ‘menopause’ out loud without shame."

First Black Life Expectancy Report and Efforts Address Longstanding Health Inequities

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu today announced the first-ever report analyzing life expectancy among Black residents in Boston as a part of the Boston Public Health Commission’s (BPHC) Live Long and Well Agenda. This will be the first in a series of reports addressing the health needs of diverse populations in Boston. Closing the Gap: An Examination of Life Expectancy Among Black Residents in Boston shows that Black residents continue to have the lowest life expectancy of any racial or ethnic group in the city.

From 2013 to 2024, the life expectancy gap between Black residents and their neighbors doubled, increasing from 3.3 years to 6.6 years. 

Program offers free food, rent and transportation help to New Yorkers with Medicaid, for limited time

New Yorkers with Medicaid can get money and other free support with non-medical needs to help them better follow doctor’s orders, thanks to a $500 million program aimed at closing health disparities across the Empire State. Several organizations providing the assistance say Haitian New Yorkers in particular should take advantage of the initiative before it ends next year. 

"I don’t want us to be left out," said Dr. Alerte, CEO of the Progressive Community Center in East Flatbush. "Very often, programs come to the city and we — the Haitian community, Caribbean community — are left out. 

[This] program is being initiated from the observation that healthcare is not just a prescription from the doctor," the doctor said.

Created in 2024, the program called the Social Care Networks system of distribution is run by nine entities throughout the state, according to a state announcement. The goal of the three-year initiative is to connect community based organizations, like Alerte’s center, with patients who can use food, transportation and housing assistance to seek or follow medical treatment. The approach is based on an understanding that poor quality of life can worsen health outcomes, its administrators say. If people have a diagnosis or treatment plan, but do not live conveniently to treatment or are behind on rent, their health will further suffer. 

Momentum builds for a federal office of men’s health focused on disease prevention

Adm. Brian Christine, an HHS assistant secretary for health, is a urologist and men’s health expert. He has made public comments about his commitment to making male health a priority within the MAHA agenda, including while introducing an expert panel on testosterone therapy late last year.

Then, in February, a bipartisan bill was introduced in the House, sponsored by Louisiana Democrat Carter Troy and co-sponsored by North Carolina Republican Gregory Murphy. The State of Men’s Health Act, which has been assigned to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, calls for a report on the state of men’s health and the creation of a dedicated office. 

"The biggest thing is to simply get the office established inside Health and Human Services because … they don’t really have a sense of how to address men’s health,” said Ronald Henry, the founder and president of the Men’s Health Network, a nonprofit that helped draft and promote the bill to mandate the federal government “start paying attention to men’s health."

Mind the Mission: Associations between Medical Schools’ Social Mission Scores and Medical Students’ Racial Biases

Physicians’ racial biases contribute to racial health disparities. Medical school is an intensive experience and a critical time to potentially intervene on physicians’ racial biases. Characteristics of medical schools may attract more or less biased medical students and shape the biases of students at those schools. Each medical school has a Social Mission Score, which indexes their commitment to social equity based on the proportion of graduates entering primary care, practicing in underserved areas, and belonging to racial groups underrepresented in medicine.

We explored the relationship between medical schools’ Social Mission Scores and the anti?Black implicit and explicit bias and quality and quantity of contact with Black people, both before and during medical school, of non?Black first-year medical students (N?= 3,554) at 49 U.S. medical schools. Multilevel models showed that students matriculating at schools with higher Social Mission Scores reported more frequent and favorable pre-medical school contact with Black people and significantly lower bias upon entry.

Closing the Health Gap Partners with Local Organizatiosn to Present 15th Annual "Spring Into Being Healthy" Fair on March 18 in Cincinnati

Event Schedule:

• 10:30 AM – One-Mile Power Walk
• 10:50 AM – Balloon Release
• 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM – Health Fair