Health Equity

The 2020 Wisconsin Health Disparities Report: Rural and Urban Populations was released at the WCHQ Health Disparities Assembly meeting on November 12, 2020. The assembly featured urban and rural perspectives on health disparities from experts in their fields: HIP Investigator, Jennifer Weiss, MD, MS and Matt Gigot, MPH, presented the findings from the 2020 report and Malia Jones, PhD, MPH presented her research on social and spatial determinants of health at the population level.

Dr. Edmond Ramly has been named one of the 2021 ICTR-CAP Stakeholder & Patient Engaged Research Pilot Awards for his Addressing disparities in the primary care of chronic conditions in the COVID-19 era: A tool for clinics to map local barriers to known strategies project.

A new publication by Dr. Christie Bartels was recently featured in a press release by Wiley. Although smoking increases symptoms and health risks for patients with rheumatic diseases, interventions to help patients quit are rarely available at rheumatology clinics.

In this article, authors implemented a rheumatology staff-driven protocol, Quit Connect, to increase the rate of electronic referrals (e-referrals) to free, state-run tobacco quit lines (TQL). The group found that implementing Quit Connect in rheumatology clinics was feasible and improved referrals to a state-run TQL.

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COVID-19 vaccination may be off to a slow start, but soon supply levels will rise and processes will be streamlined. Thoughtfully designed outreach with well-crafted messages will be of the utmost importance to ensure enough people are vaccinated to put us on the path to population immunity and long-term protection from the disease. As decision-makers plan and implement vaccination campaigns, understanding the risk of death (mortality) from COVID-19 and potential barriers to vaccine uptake by ZIP code will be valuable in building effective communication and outreach plans in each community.

COVID-19 vaccination may be off to a slow start, but soon supply levels will rise and processes will be streamlined. Thoughtfully designed outreach with well-crafted messages will be of the utmost importance to ensure enough people are vaccinated to pave the way to population immunity and long-term protection from the disease.

Where people live, and the health-related characteristics of their communities, has a significant impact on the health and health outcomes of residents. Differences in health care quality and outcomes for rural and urban populations has been a focus of national priority and attention.

Researchers at UW-Madison distinguished the unique health-related characteristics of rural and urban ZIP codes across Wisconsin to identify important factors (e.g. health care providers, insurance status, poverty) that contribute to health, resulting in six groups of rural and urban ZIP codes in Wisconsin: Rural Underserved, Rural, Rural Advantaged, Urban Underserved, Urban, and Urban Advantaged.

The Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality (WCHQ), in collaboration with Health Innovation Program, developed the Wisconsin Health Disparities: Rural and Urban Populations Report to help inform and accelerate programs that are working to eliminate disparities. The 2020 report identifies where disparities in health outcomes and care exist in rural and urban areas in Wisconsin by using a unique categorization system developed by researchers at the University of Wisconsin Health Innovation Program (HIP). Funding for this report was provided by the Wisconsin Partnership Program, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

Health Innovation Program partnered with the Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality, the University of Wisconsin Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR), and the ICTR Neighborhood Health Partnerships Program to feature three posters at the Wisconsin Public Health Association Virtual Public Health Conference. Check out more information about each poster below:

HIP Investigator, Dr. Elizabeth Cox in collaboration with the Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality (WCHQ), Dr. Melissa Gilkey (University of North Carolina), and members of the PROKids team received a Carbone Cancer Center Rural Cancer Pilot Award. The project, “On-Time HPV Vaccination for Rural Wisconsin Youth” will help inform interventions at the healthcare system-level that focus on low rates of HPV vaccination in rural Wisconsin. The project will use WCHQ data to develop and validate metrics of on-time HPV vaccination initiation and completion in Wisconsin health systems.

With the release of the 2015 American Thyroid Association (ATA) Management Guidelines for Adults with Differentiated Thyroid Cancer, treatment decisions for low-risk thyroid cancer became more complicated. Although the guidelines were meant to supplement shared patient-healthcare provider decision-making, the patient-provider deliberation often fails to meet the informational standards for patients and can often exclude available treatments. Low-risk thyroid cancer patients often don’t know what questions to ask, while the physicians report not knowing how to obtain patients’ preferences and include them into treatment decisions.