* This past week there have been a number of news articles on HIV and the racial disparities among those who are infected. The Washington Post reported that the number of young homosexual men diagnosed with HIV has risen 12%. The largest increase of 15% was among young African American men (compared to a 9% increase among young white men):
Previous studies have found that gay black men on average have fewer sex partners, are less likely to use drugs and are no more likely to have unprotected intercourse than gay white men. Consequently, their higher rate of infection does not appear to arise from riskier behavior.
Instead, it reflects the higher prevalence of HIV — as well as syphilis and gonorrhea, which increase a person’s susceptibility to HIV — in the black population.
Despite this negative news of increasing health disparities between whites and African Americans, there was also a positive step in the battle against HIV. According to the New York Times, the New York City Health Department has announced a three year plan to give an HIV test to everyone living in the Bronx:
While Manhattan has long been the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic in New York, with the highest incidence of both AIDS and H.I.V., the virus that causes it, the Bronx, with its poorer population, has far more deaths from the disease. Public health officials attribute this to people not getting tested until it is too late to treat the virus effectively, thus turning a disease that can now be managed with medication into a death sentence.
Though the story does not mention the demographic population of the Bronx, 35.6% of Bronx residents are African American, a much larger percentage than the percentage of African American Manhattanites (who make up only 17.4% of the borough’s population). Expanding HIV testing in the Bronx is an important part of combating the racial disparities among those with HIV and helping end the upward trend of HIV rates among young African Americans.
* The Kaiser Health Disparities Report has a story on a House bill to reduce allowable lead levels in paint. The bill, which just unanimously passed the House Financial Services Committee, aims to lower the number of children exposed to lead-based paint (many of whom are poor, minority children who live in older homes):
According to bill sponsor Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and other lawmakers, despite a 1992 law that restricted the use of lead-based paint in houses, hundreds of thousands of children are exposed to excessive levels of lead, which can cause brain damage and other serious health problems.
* The HealthBeat blog has a posting on how progressives should incorporate cost control into their discussion of health care reform. Without cost control on the agenda of health care reform, it will be difficult to bring Americans who are most concerned with rising costs of health care on board:
That is why I believe that progressives must begin talking about the high cost of care, and how we need to wring the waste out of the system to make truly effective, high quality care affordable for everyone. Don’t let the conservatives dominate the debate about spending. If they do, they’ll take the conversation in the wrong direction.
The Opportunity Agenda believes that addressing the issue of cost is crucial to a fruitful, productive discussion on health care reform. For example, 52% of American workers do not enroll in employer insurance plans because they are too costly. Premiums for family coverage have increased by 59% since 2000. Decreasing these costs, in addition to addressing the problems of unequal access and unequal quality, is absolutely necessary in order to reform the health care system in the U.S. To learn more, take a look at The Opportunity Agenda fact sheet, Health Care and Opportunity.
* For a touch of humor, check out a recent posting on Disease Management Care Blog. Along with a YouTube video of Canned Heat’s “Let’s Work Together” there are new lyrics encouraging all to work together to reform health care in the U.S.:
Together we’ll stand
Divided we’ll fall
we need more data
the… cash flows will stall
let’s work together
Come on, come on
let’s work together
Now now people….
Because together we will stand
Every doc, all the vendors and Plans!…
