Housing and food are health care: How new Medicaid rules in 8 states stand to help the most vulnerable
Published in Slideshow World
Americans' health care experiences are as varied as their backgrounds. For some, their income, housing, transportation, and other factors that shape their everyday lives can be obstacles to accessing much-needed health care.
However, recent changes to federal health care policies could eliminate some of these barriers. The federal agency over Medicaid provides health care to more than 76 million adults and children, some of whom may benefit from new programs being enacted in several states to meet their unique socioeconomic needs.
Foothold Technology analyzed resources from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS, and KFF, as well as plans from state health departments, to illustrate how states are implementing new guidance on addressing social conditions inextricably tied to health, known as health-related social needs, within their communities.
HRSNs are the supports needed to overcome what are known as social determinants of health, or the nonmedical factors that impact health outcomes and care. The World Health Organization defines SDH as "the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age." SDH came to light most recently when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in the U.S., highlighting how income, working conditions, and access to nutritious foods—or lack thereof—can affect public health in a time of crisis.
Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous communities were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic for various reasons that didn't stem from the virus itself. Decades of being underserved by health care systems, food insecurity, overrepresentation in customer-facing service jobs, as well as the chronic stress of racism and earning lower wages on average than their white counterparts, made many people of color more vulnerable to the virus.
Socioeconomic factors can influence as much as a 50% variation in health outcomes for Americans, meaning improving underlying issues like housing instability could be half the battle in helping someone living with diabetes live a longer, healthier life, for example. In recent years, the federal government has started to adopt wide-ranging responses to address those issues, including through new guidance from the CMS, with the potential to impact more than tens of millions of people.
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