The Pennsylvania Department of Health’s Bureau of Family Health is completing its Title V Five-Year Needs and Capacity Assessment. The assessment provides the opportunity to evaluate the health status of women, infants, children, adolescents, and children and youth with special health care needs in Pennsylvania, to identify priority health needs, and to guide state and local public health work over the next five years. The survey is for those who were not able to attend the in-person prioritization events to share input on potential priorities. Consider including the importance of oral health in responses. Complete the survey by November 14, 2019.

Click here to complete the survey. 

The Rural Health Research Gateway released a Dissemination of Rural Health Research Toolkit to help researchers develop appropriate, timely, accessible, and applicable products as well as social media campaigns to get the word out about their work. The toolkit provides descriptions for multiple modes of dissemination, including:  policy briefs, fact sheets, infographics, journal publications, poster presentations, chartbooks, PowerPoint presentations, working papers and reports, and promotional products. The toolkit, which is free and downloadable, also includes a brief discussion on the purpose of each product, which product is appropriate given the topic and intended audience, and how to format and design each product. Effective examples are provided.

President Trump last week announced that he intends to nominate Stephen Hahn, CMO of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, to serve as FDA commissioner. In addition, Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for health at HHS, has replaced Ned Sharpless as FDA’s acting commissioner until a permanent commissioner is confirmed. (Source: Washington Post, 11/1)

CMS has released a final rule to update Medicare’s Hospital Outpatient and Ambulatory Surgical Center Payment Systems for calendar year (CY) 2020. CMS in the final rule said it will continue to implement site-neutral payments and payment cuts under Medicare’s 340B Drug Discount Program, despite separate court rulings striking down the policies. However, CMS did not finalize a proposal to require all hospitals to publicize their payer-negotiated rates for certain services because officials said they are working to expand the requirement to also include health insurers. (Sources: HealthLeaders Media, 11/2; Wall Street Journal, 11/1)

The Technical Assistance and Services Center (TASC), a program of the National Rural Health Resource Center, is pleased to announce a collection of resources for rural hospitals and provider-based rural health clinics to address disparities in COPD related care. This project was supported by the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy via the Fiscal Year 2018 Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) Supplemental Project.

Resources, Resources, Resources!

All of the resources from this project can be found on the TASC website. They include:

• The Rural Hospital Guide to Improving COPD
• The Rural COPD Podcast series
• Three webinars relating to COPD

Access the COPD section of the website by clicking here.

Health care for preventable non-communicable diseases, including heart disease and stroke, diabetes, and obesity costs the overall US healthcare system over $580 billion annually. More than 30 million Americans are now living with diabetes, 75 million are hypertensive, and nearly 40% of American adults are obese. There is need to transform chronic disease prevention in the US by identifying and scaling effective and innovative community-wide prevention strategies and increase financial investment in prevention. To help the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) better understand the barriers to effective chronic disease prevention, email your responses to preventionx@hhs.gov, with the subject line “PreventionX RFI Comment” by December 13, 2019.  Click here for more information..

As part of an ongoing effort by the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy (FORHP) to assess the extent to which FORHP-administered grant programs align with the needs of rural communities, HRSA has published a Request for Information (RFI) soliciting public comment.  Respondents are asked to comment on whether and how the eligibility criteria governing FORHP’s community-based grant programs affect rural communities’ ability to leverage grant funding through FORHP.  RFI responses must be provided via email to RFIComments@hrsa.gov and must reference “Rural Health Grants Eligibility RFI” in the title.  Submissions are due no later than 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on November 23, 2019. HRSA will not accept hard-copy responses or other formats. 

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has announced $2.27 billion in Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program grants  were awarded to cities, counties, states, and local community-based organizations to support a comprehensive system of primary medical care, medication, and essential support services for people with HIV in the United States.  The Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program (RWHAP), administered by the Health Resources and Services Administration’s HIV/AIDS Bureau, plays a leading role in the Administration’s new Ending the HIV Epidemic initiative.  According to most recent data, there are more than 12,000 RWHAP clients who visited only rural providers.  Of these, 85.5 percent were virally suppressed, meaning that HIV levels have an “undetectable” status following consistent use of daily antiretroviral therapy.  Access the list of grantees here.