Managed Care Cast

On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we feature several leaders in diversity, equity, and inclusion advancing health equity in their respective organization’s policy and practice initiatives.

Shereef Elnahal, MD, MBA, under secretary for health at the Veterans Health Administration, sat for a conversation with our hosts Emeline Aviki, MD, MBA, and Stephen Schleicher, MD, MBA, that covered the cancer footprint of the VHA, from work within the newly reinvigorated Cancer Moonshot program and screening for vulnerable communities to the Million Veterans Program, the largest genomic database of its kind in the country and of Black Americans, including information on more than 150,000 Black veterans.

National Public Health Week is observed across the United States each year during the first full week of April, and this year will run from April 3-9. Originally conceived and organized by the American Public Health Association, and now in existence for more than 25 years, the theme this year is, “Centering and Celebrating Cultures in Health.”

For National Public Health Week this year, we sat down with Kristen Krause, PhD, MPH, instructor in the Department of Urban-Global Public Health and deputy director, Center for Health, Identity, Behavior and Prevention Studies, Rutgers School of Public Health. Our conversation covered not only her current areas of research focus, but the importance of health equity among traditionally marginalized communities, how the early days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic shaped much of the worldview on public health, the influence of culture on many a health outcome, and lessons learned from past public health emergencies.

In part 1 of this 2-part series on health equity in the treatment of psoriasis, Ryan Haumschild, PharmD, and Bryan Buckley, DrPH, discuss how providers can address disparities in care, specifically with race, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds in mind.

On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we speak with Virginia Wang, PhD, and Matthew L. Maciejewski, PhD, who talk about their recent study on racial disparities in home dialysis, and what more needs to be done to increase uptake and reduce disparities in home dialysis for non-White patients.

On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we feature several leaders in diversity, equity, and inclusion advancing health equity in their respective organization’s policy and practice initiatives.

On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we speak with Jennifer Schneider, MD, co-founder and chief executive officer of Homeward, a value-based care provider aiming to improve access to high-quality care in rural communities through tech-enabled clinical services, partnerships with local physicians and health plans, and community-level demographic data.

On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we speak with Elizabeth Cuevas, MD, division chief of Allegheny Health Network’s Center for Inclusion Health, on prevalent health inequities facing marginalized communities in the Western Pennslyvania region and strategies to identify and address these issues.

For patients to receive timely access to care and for providers to deliver that care on a correspondingly timely basis, the correctness of provider contact information is of utmost importance.

However, the results of a new study on the accuracy of mental health provider directories and network adequacy, published in the February issue of The American Journal of Managed Care® and online at AJMC.com, paint a less-than-stellar picture of these data, with implications for the ability of consumers to be able to use mental health care services when they need them.

On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we speak with Simon F. Haeder, PhD, MPA, professor of public health at the Texas A&M University School of Public Health, 1 of 3 authors of the article, “Provider Directory Inaccuracy and Timely Access for Mental Health Care.” He and his co-investigators looked at the accuracy of directories of psychiatrists and nonphysician mental health providers for all plans regulated by the California Department of Managed Health Care in 2018 and 2019. Their goals were 2-fold: to decipher the accuracy of these provider directories in California and to see if consumers who need timely access to care can get it from these providers.

Mental health issues and substance use disorder are one of the contributing factors to America’s high maternal mortality rates, in addition to poverty, racism, and lack of access to adequate health care. Last year, the CDC reported that suicide accounts for 9% of the maternal mortality rate 1 year postpartum. Anxiety, perinatal and postpartum depression, and birth-related PTSD are the most common complications of pregnancy and childbirth, affecting 1 in 5 individuals, and for those affect, 75% do not get treatment. Women of color are both more likely to experience these conditions and also also less likely to seek help.

On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we speak with Heather Waters, LCSW who leads the maternal health and children’s health services team at Inland Empire Health Plan, a managed care plan serving more than 1.4 million residents on Medi-Cal in California.

She tells us about a new maternal mental health program at IEHP aimed at supporting new mothers, both before they give birth and afterwards.