Pharmacy Podcast NetworkHealth Disparities is an indicator of a Broken System | Special guest - Gil Bashe
Gil Bashe, Managing Director of Finn Partners and Medika Life’s top 25 most influential voices in healthcare for 2021 joins Todd Eury on a discussion about our nation’s health disparities and our healthcare system’s reflection of a broken system. Interact w/ Gil on twitter, here: https://twitter.com/Gil_Bashe
References:
Angelina Zayas, co-founder of the Grace and Peace community center, turned her church into a food bank on Chicago's northwest side.
Just 4% of residents in the ZIP code received the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine as of Sunday, according to data from the Chicago Department of Public Health. Similarly low vaccination rates exist in other majority-Latino and majority-Black neighborhoods across the city's south and west sides, despite COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on those populations.
Bashe, named by Medika Life as one of the top 50 healthcare influencers, outlines why health care technology must be more accessible to people with urgent health needs.
https://medika.life/fifty-of-the-most-influential-voices-in-healthcare-for-2021/
[The US government is throwing the kitchen sink at the Covid-19 national response. It’s doing so with an urgency so great that the Food and Drug Administration has issued Emergency Use Authorizations that tear down long-standing obstacles to telehealth, digital health, diagnostics and innovative medications that may prove effective against the virus.
By Gregg Girvan and Avik Roy
The United States ranks 4th in the World Index of Healthcare Innovation, with an overall score of 54.96, behind only Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands. Americans are usually the first to gain access to major new medical advances, advances often discovered at American universities and developed by American companies. As a result, the U.S. ranked first for both Choice (57.65) and Science & Technology (75.14).
Vaccine ‘Deserts’
Released in early February, the study, a white paper posted on the University of Pittsburgh’s website, found that in 69 counties, Black Americans would need to travel farther to get to sites such as hospital outpatient departments, federally qualified health centers and rural health clinics, and community pharmacies that formed the early backbone of large-scale vaccination efforts. The study, which used a sample population and geographic data supplied by the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Health Resources and Services Administration, among others, found that some of the worst so-called “vaccine deserts” for Black people were in Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina.
In Lee County, Ga., for example, Black Americans are 825% more likely to live more than 10 miles from a vaccination location than whites. In Madison County, Miss., the figure is 976%. And in Chilton County, Ala., it’s 1,193%, the study found.
But disparities are not limited to the rural South, according to lead investigator Lucas Berenbrok, PharmD, an assistant professor of pharmacy and therapeutics at UPMC School of Pharmacy. “Of those 69 counties, 23 are in urban areas, some are in the West and Southwest, and a few are in the Northeast,” Berenbrok said. “The point this analysis makes is that our existing health care infrastructure probably isn’t going to cut it in terms of achieving a good, equitable distribution of vaccines.”
https://www.idse.net/Covid-19/Article/02-21/Pharmacy-s-Role-in-Addressing-Vaccine-Inequities/62669
This episode was sponsored by Ultiguard Safe Pack
UltiGuard Safe Pack is the only pen needle product that comes with an all-in-one sharps container. Learn more about why UltiGuard Safe Pack is the best choice for your patients and your pharmacy.
https://omny.fm/shows/pharmacy-podcast-network/playlists/ultiguard-safe-pack-podcast
