Featured Blogs Delivering Compassionate Personalized Care To All By Monica Barczak, PhD Established in 1926, Ascension St. John (ASJ) is a fully integrated healthcare delivery system encompassing six hospitals and more than 90 clinics and facilities in eastern Oklahoma and southeastern Kansas. In our latest blog post, Monica Barczak, PhD, of Ascension St. John shares the specific strategies the health system is implementing to reduce racial disparities in public health and reduce unconscious bias in healthcare. Read more > * * * * * Confronting Community Challenges and Promoting Solutions By Su Phipps, PhD, R.N. For 80 years the Community Service Council (CSC) has empowered communities to ignite opportunities and eliminate disparities. In last month’s blog, Dr. Su Phipps, Director of CSC's Healthy Women, Healthy Futures program, shares how the Community Service Council initiates and advances effective community-based solutions to address health disparities in the Tulsa area. Read more > |
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Public Health Session Recap In May more than 60 community members joined our fifth community engagement session of the Equality Indicators Learning Series. During the session we discussed the health disparities that impact Tulsans today with Reggie Ivey of Tulsa Health Department, LaBrisa Williams of Tulsa Birth Equity Initiative, Chris Bernard of Hunger Free Oklahoma, and Zack Stoycoff of Healthy Minds Policy Initiative. Key Takeaways - The Tulsa Health Department (THD) has named racism as a public health threat, recognizing it as a root cause of disparity and inequity in health and health care, and is strategically focusing on health equity to best serve residents of Tulsa and Tulsa County. THD recommends multi-level structural and policy interventions to adequately address and reduce health disparities, including those focused on economic instability, limited educational and employment opportunities, societal racism, and lack of resources.
- Tulsa Birth Equity Initiative’s recommendations to address disparities in infant mortality include expanding Medicaid coverage to birthing women up to a year postpartum, and diversifying physician workforce to better reflect the communities they serve.
- Hunger Free Oklahoma identified large scale and community-based initiatives that can help eliminate food deserts and reduce food insecurity including: incentivizing stores to have fresh produce; removing barriers to access WIC and SNAP; building community and encouraging healthy lifestyles; encouraging urban agriculture through local zoning; enacting regulations to enable people to sell produce grown in local community gardens or farms; and offering tax incentives and subsidies for full-service grocery stores through combinations of private, public and philanthropic capital.
- Healthy Minds Policy Initiative (HMPI) recommended several policy and structural changes to create an ideal system of care for those with mental illness including: workforce development and job creation enabling self-sufficient wages; individualized levels of care based on need; better connection between physical and mental health care systems to encourage earlier detection of mental illness and fewer disruptions in care; increase in number of and value placed on behavioral health providers; and culturally and linguistically appropriate provider workforce to better reflect patient demographics.
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Language Access Notice: Following are the steps to add auto-translated subtitles to the event recording: 1. Click CC; 2. Click Settings; 3. Click Subtitles/CC; 4. Click Autotranslate; 5. Choose your language |
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Public Health Resources & Links Resources shared by panelists and participants: |
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Public Health Data Indicators Click on the below infographics to further explore the data. |
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