A Scoping Review of Health Equity Interventions in Governmental Public Health.

CONTEXT: Despite major efforts in research, practice, and policy, racial and ethnic disparities in health and health care persist in the United States. Interventions in collaboration with governmental public health may provide ways to address these persistent racial and ethnic health and health care disparities and improve health outcomes. OBJECTIVE: To conduct a comprehensive review of health equity interventions performed in collaboration with public health agencies. DESIGN: This scoping review includes intervention studies from Ovid MEDLINE, PsycINFO, and Academic Search Premier, published between 2017 and 2023. The search strategy used terminology focused on 4 concepts: race/ethnicity, equity, health departments, and epidemiologic studies. ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA: The following inclusion criteria were determined a priori: (1) intervention tailored to reduce racial/ethnic health disparities, (2) public health department involvement, (3) health outcome measures, (4) use of epidemiologic study methods, (5) written in English, (6) implemented in the United States, (7) original data (not a commentary), and (8) published between January 2017 and January 2023. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: This review focused primarily on 4 dimensions of racial health equity interventions including intervention components, intervention settings, intervention delivery agents, and intervention outcomes. RESULTS: This review indicated that health equity interventions involving public health agencies focused on the following categories: (1) access to care, (2) health behavior, (3) infectious disease testing, (4) preventing transmission, and (5) cancer screening. Critical strategies included in interventions for reaching racial/ethnic minoritized people included using community settings, mobile clinics, social media/social networks, phone-based interventions, community-based workers, health education, active public health department involvement, and structural/policy change. CONCLUSIONS: This scoping review aims to provide an evidence map to inform public health agencies, researchers, and funding agencies on gaps in knowledge and priority areas for future research and to identify existing health equity interventions that could be considered for implementation by public health leaders.

Health Equity and Healthcare Disparities in Plastic Surgery: What We Can Do.

Amidst the unexpected losses and challenges of 2020, healthcare disparities and health equity have presided as noteworthy topics of national discussion among healthcare workers, governmental officials, and society at large. Health equity, defined as the opportunity for everyone to be as healthy as possible, may be achieved through the alleviation of healthcare disparities. Healthcare disparities are defined as "preventable differences in the burden of disease, injury, violence, or opportunities to achieve optimal health that are experienced by socially disadvantaged populations." While these concepts may be perceived as a departure from the core responsibility of plastic surgeons, it is of paramount importance to recognize how race, socioeconomic status (SES), and physical environment impact access to care, surgical outcomes, and postoperative recovery for vulnerable populations. In this communication, our purpose is two-fold: 1) to elucidate the existent healthcare disparities and associations with race and SES in craniofacial, trauma, breast, hand, and gender-affirming reconstruction; and 2) provide tangible recommendations to incorporate the concepts of health equity and healthcare disparities in clinical, research, community, and recruitment settings for plastic surgeons. Through such knowledge, plastic surgeons may glean important insights that may enhance the delivery of equitable and accessible care for patients.

Global, Regional, National, and Subnational Big Data to Inform Health Equity Research: Perspectives from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017.

Objectives: Everyone deserves a long and healthy life, but in reality, health outcomes differ across populations. We use results from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017 (GBD 2017) to report patterns in the burden of diseases, injuries, and risks at the global, regional, national, and subnational level, and by sociodemographic index (SDI), from 1990 to 2017. Design: GBD 2017 undertook a systematic analysis of published studies and available data providing information on prevalence, incidence, remission, and excess mortality. We computed prevalence, incidence, mortality, life expectancy, healthy life expectancy, years of life lost due to premature mortality, years lived with disability, and disability-adjusted life years with 95% uncertainty intervals for 23 age groups, both sexes, and 918 locations, including 195 countries and territories and subnational locations for 16 countries from 1990 to 2017. We also computed SDI, a summary indicator combining measures of income, education, and fertility. Results: There were wide disparities in the burden of disease by SDI, with smaller burdens in affluent countries and in specific regions within countries. Select diseases and risks, such as drug use disorders, high blood pressure, high body mass index, diet, high fasting plasma glucose, smoking, and alcohol use disorders warrant increased global attention and indicate a need for greater investment in prevention and treatment across the life course. Conclusions: Policymakers need a comprehensive picture of what risks and causes result in disability and death. The GBD provides the means to quantify health loss: these findings can be used to examine root causes of disparities and develop programs to improve health and health equity.

Relatório luz da Agenda 2030 de desenvolvimento sustentável: síntese III / Relatório Luz / Spotlight report on the 2030 sustainable development agenda: synthesis III Brazil

O Grupo de Trabalho da Sociedade Civil para a Agenda 2030, GTSC A2030, foi formalizado em setembro de 2014 e é resultado do encontro entre organizações não governamentais, movimentos sociais, fóruns e fundações brasileiras durante o seguimento das negociações da Agenda pós-2015. Desde então, atua na difusão, promoção e monitoramento da Agenda 2030, assim como da Agenda de Ação de Adis Abeba, em âmbito local, nacional e internacional.

This summary version of the Civil Society Spotlight Report indicates the magnitude of Brazil's challenges, whose policies to promote equality, and access to social and environmental justice have been losing status, budget, or have been simply eliminated in the last six months. It shows a rapid dismantling of strategic programs to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, permeated by scandals in the three levels of power, fuelled by ultra-liberal, elitist, and ineffective policies that deepen the social-economic crisis which, in turn, is used to justify environmental degradation and social aggression. The federal government ignores laws and evidence, insisting on simplistic and misguided solutions to complex challenges, including by reorienting the foreign policy to the point of alienating historic geopolitical allies. The data presented here is from official sources, revealing a trend toward increasing inequalities and violence, which, if not reversed, will make Brazil an unsustainable country by 2030.

Emerging Trends in Clinical Research: With Implications for Population Health and Health Policy.

Policy Points: Significant advances in clinical medicine that have broader societal relevance may be less accessible to population health researchers and policymakers because of increased specialization within fields. We describe important recent clinical advances and discuss their broader societal impact. These advances include more expansive strategies for disease prevention, the rise of precision medicine, applications of human microbiome research, and new and highly successful treatments for hepatitis C infection. These recent developments in clinical research raise important issues surrounding health care costs and equitable resource allocation that necessitate an ongoing dialogue among the fields of clinical medicine, population health, and health policy. CONTEXT: Developments in clinical medicine have important implications for population health, and there is a need for interdisciplinary engagement among clinical medicine, the social sciences, and public health research. The aim of this article is to help bridge the divide between these fields by exploring major recent advances in clinical medicine that have important implications for population health. METHODS: We reviewed the most cited articles published from 2010 to 2015 in 5 high-impact clinical journals and selected 5 randomized controlled trials and 2 related clinical practice guidelines that are broadly relevant to population health and policy. FINDINGS: We discuss the following themes: (1) expanding indications for drug therapy and the inherent medicalization of the population as highlighted by studies and clinical guidelines supporting lower blood pressure targets or widespread statin use; (2) the tension in nutritional research between quantifying the impact of isolated nutrients and studying specific foods and dietary patterns, for example, the role of the Mediterranean diet in the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease; (3) the issue of high medication costs and the challenge of providing equitable access raised by the development of new and effective treatments for hepatitis C infection; (4) emerging clinical applications of research on the human microbiome as illustrated by fecal transplant to treat Clostridium difficile infections; and (5) the promise and limitations of precision medicine as demonstrated by the rise of novel targeted therapies in oncology. CONCLUSIONS: These developments in clinical science hold promise for improving individual and population health and raise important questions about resource allocation, the role of prevention, and health disparities.

Identifying Policy Levers And Opportunities For Action Across States To Achieve Health Equity.

In the United States, steps to advance health equity often take place at the state and local levels rather than the national level. Using publicly available data sources, we developed a scorecard for all fifty states and the District of Columbia that measures indicators of the use of five evidence-based policies to address domains related to health equity. The indicators are the cigarette excise tax rate, a state's Medicaid expansion status and the size of its coverage gap, percentage of four-year olds enrolled in state-funded pre-kindergarten, minimum wage level, and the presence of state-funded housing subsidy programs and homelessness prevention and rapid rehousing programs. We found that states varied significantly in their implementation of the selected policies and concluded that a variety of approaches to encourage policy changes at the state level will be needed to create healthier and more equitable communities. We describe promising, feasible state-level approaches for states to "do something, do more, do better" when they take action on the five selected policies that can promote health equity.

[Are health inequalities increasing with time? Results of a literature review and recommendations for further research]. / Nimmt die gesundheitliche Ungleichheit zu? Ergebnisse eines Literaturreviews und Empfehlungen für die weitere Forschung.

It has been shown that socio-economic status (SES) and health are closely linked to one another. Now we focus on further questions, and one of the most important ones is whether these "health inequalities" increase with time. In Germany, there is little discussion about this question and no review summarising the empirical evidence is available.This review focuses on 4 dimensions: time trends of health inequalities concerning mortality (or, respectively, life expectancy), self-rated health, smoking and obesity. First we included all empirical analyses from Germany, and all analyses from other European countries published between 2008 and 2012. Then, step-wise, 44 studies (including 5 from Germany) were selected by predefined criteria for a detailed -description of empirical results and methods.The number of publications has strong-ly increased in recent years, illustrating the growing interest in time trends of health inequalities. The empirical results of the 44 studies could be summarised in the following way: All in all, 184 empirical results are reported about time trends in health inequalities and 112 of them show increasing inequalities; decreasing inequalities are shown in 13 reports. The studies from Germany point in the same direction (i. e., most results indicate increasing health inequalities). It is also important to stress that there is great -heterogeneity concerning the methodical approaches. Some studies analyse health inequalities by individual socio-economic status (e. g., educational level), others by regional deprivation. Sometimes changes in the extent of health inequalities over time are not calculated explicitly. Some papers do not include absolute and relative measures of inequalities, but just one of them.In Germany, there is a need for more empirical studies looking at time trends of health inequalities; the available datasets should be used more often for this type of analysis. If possible, further studies should include individual SES and regional deprivation, measures of absolute and relative inequality (stratified by sex, with significance tests for time trend), and they should cover as many points in time as possible. Also, it would be important to relate the chang-es in health inequalities to the other changes in the society.

Equidad en la Política de Reforma del Sistema de Salud / Reform and equity in the access to and use of health services in Bogotá, Colombia

En el presente estudio nos propusimos evaluar el impacto de la transformación del Sistema Nacional de Salud en Sistema de Seguridad Social en Salud, sobre la equidad en el acceso, la utilización y la calidad de los servicios de salud. Interpretamos la equidad como la igualdad de todos los individuos frente a las oportunidades de acceso real a los servicios de salud. Llevamos a cabo un estudio transversal para detectar las diferencias que pudiesen existir entre los afiliados y los no afiliados, y los tipos de afiliación en términos de acceso y utilización de los servicios de salud. Se aplicó una encuesta a 364 hogares con 1.324 personas mayores de 9 años sobre aspectos sociodemográficos y laborales, afiliación a la seguridad social, tipo de afiliación (régimen contributivo y subsidiado) utilización de los servicios de salud, atención y gasto en salud. En hospitales de nivel 1, 2 y 3 se escogieron al azar 297 usuarios del servicio de consulta externa y se les aplicó una encuesta sobre afiliación, conocimiento de derechos, oportunidad de atención, calidad del servicio, satisfacción general y participación social. Una vez que se controló para género, edad, estrato de vivienda, ocupación e ingreso se encontraron numerosas diferencias no justificadas en la necesidad, la consulta, el sitio al que se acude, el motivo para no consultar, la atención recibida y la utilización de servicios. Estos problemas de equidad remiten al diseño, la estructura y la operación del modelo de competencia regulada.(AU)

In the present study we intended to evaluate the impact of the transformation of the national health system into the Social Security Health System upon the equity in access to health services as well as their use and quality. We interpreted equity as the equal opportunity for all people of gaining real access to health services. A cross-sectional study was designed to detect the differences, which might exist between affiliated and non-affiliated people, and the differences in access to and use of health services according to the nature of affiliation. A survey was carried out in 364 households comprising 1324 people aged 9 years or older, in which socio-demographic and labor aspects, affiliation to social security, nature of the affiliation (contributive or subsidized regime), use of health services, attention and expenditure in health services were studied. 297 randomly chosen patients of the outpatient clinics of hospitals of levels 1,2 and 3 were asked to answer a survey about affiliation, awareness of their rights, opportunity and quality of the health service, general satisfaction and social participation. Numerous differences, which could not be justified by necessity, cause for requesting attention, place where people demanded health services, attention received or use of health services, were found once adjustments for gender, age, housing stratum, occupation and income were made. These problems in equity relate to the design, structure and operation of the model of regulated competition.(AU)