North America. HHS developments
North America
HHS developments
Keywords: Women's health, Health care delivery, Public education grants
In October, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tommy G. Thompson announced the creation of five new national community centers of excellence in women's health (CCOEs) to provide integrated health and social services to women in their communities. The new CCOEs will serve women of diverse races and ethnicities in urban, suburban and rural neighbourhoods. They will coordinate all aspects of issues related to women's health throughout the life span, and will address the cultural and socio-economic challenges to quality health care for underserved women. HHS will provide $150,000 to each centre for each of the next five years to support the program, which brings the total number of CCOEs to 12.
Secretary Thompson said: "These new national community centers of excellence are part of our continuing effort to bring quality health care to women in all corners of the USA. We know that the best way to ensure culturally appropriate care for the nation's most underserved citizens is through integrated community-based care. This program expands successful models of care that have worked wonders in other communities."
The CCOE program provides recognition and resources to community-based programs that unite promising approaches in women's health across six components: health services delivery, particularly preventive services; training for health care professionals and other staff; community-based research; public education and outreach; leadership development for women; and technical assistance to other communities that want to replicate the program.
The programme was created and is funded by the HHS Office on Women's Health,the HHS Office of Minority Health and HHS Health Resources and Services Administration. It is part of the department's goal to eliminate racial, ethnic and gender disparities in health status.
The HHS has also announced $2.5 million in grants to support state and local efforts to implement and develop new and creative approaches to providing health care and social services. According to Secretary Thompson: "These grants reward states for thinking outside the box and finding new ways to help their residents get the health care and other services that they need."
Secretary Thompson established the "State Innovation Grants" program to spur states to find new ways to improve access to health care, to reduce levels of poverty or to tackle other important projects to better the lives of their residents. HHS awarded the grants competitively to states that proposed to design and implement demonstrations using new models for delivering health care,long-term care, and/or human services to low-income adults, families and children.
Additionally, 25 grants have been awarded, totalling $11.4 million, to fund community-based research into local disease prevention and health promotion needs. The grants will support coordinated efforts between academic centers and state and local health departments to identify the research needs of their communities.
The grants are intended to help researchers identify critical health research needs in local communities so that they can better target efforts to promote good health and prevent illness. They will fund research in a variety of areas such as physical activity, diabetes, youth and school-based health, nutrition,obesity, asthma, drug prevention, tobacco prevention and violence/injury prevention. Findings from this research should help communities develop public health policies and practices that promote health and reduce disease, disability and injury among specific populations. The awards have been made under the extramural prevention research program at HHS centers for disease control and prevention (CDC).
Further information: more information on the CCOEs is available at www.4woman.gov Information about the HHS awards can be found on the HHS Web site at www.hhs.gov. For information about Healthy People 2010, go to www.health.gov/healthypeople
