N.D. project trains future health professionals to write plain-language health stories for rural newspapers

A University of North Dakota project is teaching future health professionals how to put health information in plain language for rural newspaper readers. Targeted Rural Health Education aims to improve rural health through better health literacy, which the pandemic has shown is vital to public well-being. The article includes a blueprint for the program so other medical schools can replicate it.

School of Medicine and Health Sciences students are taught health-literacy concepts and tools, the Rural Health Information Hub reports: "Participants write a newspaper-friendly, data-informed, public health-focused education article that embraces health literacy's emphasis on the use of plain language. Because rural newspapers are an important disseminators of information — including health information — rural newspaper editors are the strategic project partners." Since the project's launch in 2017, nearly 30 students have published  articles in Montana, North Dakota and Wisconsin.

The project is a collaboration of the North Dakota Rural Health Association, the University of North Dakota Center for Rural Health, and the UND Department of Family and Community Medicine.

March 17 teleconference to cover coronavirus prevention and treatment options

The Commonwealth Fund will host a March 17 teleconference briefing for journalists and policymakers to discuss prevention and treatment of the coronavirus. The call will last about an hour and will begin at 12:30 p.m. ET. Register here.

Experts will cover the following topics:

• What policy tools do the federal government and states have at their disposal to address the pandemic, and what actions have they taken so far? 
• How can we expand coverage and access to care through Medicaid, and how can we work with insurers so that no one is deterred from seeking needed treatment?
• What role could emergency federal powers play, and where could they fall short?

The call will be conducted by:

• Kevin Lucia, J.D., M.H.P., Research Professor, Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms
• Sara Rosenbaum, J.D., Harold and Jane Hirsh Professor of Health Law and Policy, George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health
• Moderator: Rachel Nuzum, M.P.H., Vice President, Federal and State Health Policy, The Commonwealth Fund

The Commonwealth Fund is a nonprofit dedicated to improving health care and making it more affordable and accessible to all Americans.

In a region and state with many teen births, E. Ky. program helps young women teach sex ed outside the classroom

All Access EKY trains young Eastern Kentucky women to make
media campaigns for birth control. (Photo by Hero Images/Getty Images)

A group called All Access EKY is hiring young Eastern Kentucky women between 17 and 22 to create media campaigns for reproductive health, with a focus on increasing access to a full spectrum of birth-control options in Eastern Kentucky, Ivy Brashear reports for Yes! Magazine.

Barriers to getting birth control in Eastern Kentucky are "profound," Brashear reports, and extend way beyond the ordinary obstacles of cost and access to care, to things like having access to reliable transportation (there is no public transportation), knowing if the employees at the clinic go to the same church as your parents, or simply finding a doctor who is willing to prescribe it.

"This is all assuming she knows anything about her birth-control options in the first place," Brashear writes, adding that many young women in Eastern Kentucky "must battle abstinence-only sex education in their schools and a cultural veil of secrecy about their bodies in order to fully understand their options."

She reports that only six of the 19 health departments and federally qualified health clinics in All Access EKY's seven counties offer the full range of birth-control options, and have only four nurse practitioners at public health clinics who are qualified to insert intrauterine devices (IUDs). And the region has a high rate of teen births, Kentucky Health News reports.

All Access, which began in 2016, is working to overcome these barriers by offering young women from the region an eight-week paid fellowship to create educational films that focus on birth control, with interviews of local women about their reproductive health experiences.

The women have also produced social-media campaigns, set up tables at local festivals, and distributed printed materials through clinics and local businesses, Brashear reports in her story, titled "Where Birth Control is Scarce, Young Women Create Sex Education Outside the Classroom."

All Access is a collaboration between the Kentucky Health Justice Network, the national nonprofit Power to Decide, and Appalshop, the media and arts organization in Whitesburg, where the project is housed.

New Georgia law targeting Obamacare prohibits Extension Service navigators who help enrollment

It's no secret that some states do not like the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Recently Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal signed two bills that not only thwart the law but make it more difficult for the Peach State to expand Medicaid anytime soon. House Bill 990 transfers Medicaid expansion authority from the governor's office to lawmakers, while HB 943 "restricts state and local agencies and their employees from advocating for Medicaid expansion" and "bans the creation of a state health insurance exchange," writes Andrea Flynn of the liberal Roosevelt Institute.

The second bill, HB 943, will also prevent the College of Family and Consumer Sciences at the University of Georgia from continuing its navigator program to help Georgians get Obamacare coverage once the federal grant of $1.7 million runs out in August, Andy Miller writes for Georgia Health News.

Although Georgia did not expand Medicaid eligibility to people earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, poor people who qualified for it and PeachCare, a state program, could still sign up. "Georgia cannot afford for our Medicaid rolls to swell. Otherwise, we start cutting into the education budget, the transportation budget and the public safety budget," Rep. Jason Spencer, sponsor of HB 943, told Georgia Health News.

The navigator program sought to educate people about the law, to help them sign up for Medicaid or for coverage on the national exchange. "People who had never had insurance and hadn't had insurance in a long time got affordable, high-quality insurance," Deborah Murray, the college's associate dean for Extension and outreach, told The Rural Blog. "People were so appreciative and relieved to know they could now afford health care."

Only a few other states have navigator programs based in universities, such as Arkansas and Florida. Murray said she knew the law wasn't popular in Georgia, but she still didn't expect the kind of political opposition that arose in the legislature. "The role of the university is to educate," Murray said. "What we were doing is really education focused: giving people the information they needed to make informed decisions."

After the grant runs out, Murray said the university's Cooperative Extension Service and its county offices will continue its mission to educate and inform. "Educating the public about health-insurance literacy is part of the Extension and land-grant mission of the university, and we will continue to do that," Murray said. "Helping people understand health insurance and use it properly will help reduce health care costs."