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People who use electricity-dependent durable medical equipment (DME) at home—such as ventilators and oxygen concentrators—can face life-threatening consequences during a power outage. HHS reports that 2.7 million Medicare beneficiaries rely on electricity-dependent DME to live independently. This ASTHOBrief details the significant challenges that individuals who rely on electricity-dependent DME face during power outages and discuss recent efforts to increase support for this population.

Learn how health agencies are prioritizing children’s health as they develop public health emergency preparedness planning in this blog.

Following a hurricane, the risk of exposure to infectious disease increases due, in part, to the presence of floodwater and debris. Hurricanes may contribute to population displacement and overcrowding—further heightening risk factors for respiratory diseases—as well as cause damage to healthcare facilities. In this post, see how jurisdictions respond to the biggest post-hurricane threats, from water-borne diseases to severe disruptions in the healthcare system.

The Louisiana Department of Health has developed Power Outage Partners, a first-of-its-kind program to recruit owners of stand-by residential generators to recharge the batteries of neighbors’ life support equipment during power outages.

As the Delta variant spreads across the country and increases the number of COVID-19 cases, the strain it is placing on the nation’s health system continues to grow. The surge of COVID-19 patients is contributing to a shortage of the medications and equipment used to treat the disease. As these limitations grow, decisions will need to be made as to which patients receive resources and care and which patients don’t. To guide these decisions, policies called crisis standards of care are often established to maximize resource benefit and ensure they are distributed equitably.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted both the physical and mental health well-being of youth. Disruptions in both their home and school life have put youth at risk for poor mental health outcomes that include increased anxiety, depression, and risk of suicide. This Mental Health Month we examine state and territorial legislation that addresses youth mental health.

All too often, work in health, housing, and human services systems is siloed. However, when you move upstream and work together, these industries can address the root causes of health and social issues. If we continue to operate our systems in silos, responding with a crisis orientation, we will be unable to fundamentally improve the challenging conditions our communities face. We may be able to create the conditions for strong, thriving families and communities if we focus on strengthening community leadership and working across systems.

The COVID-19 pandemic provided an unprecedented opportunity to speed up developing Delaware’s Functional Assessment Service Team and to test it at scale.

The disparities experienced during the COVID pandemic have brought a national focus to health equity in our nation. The attention and resources currently being provided to help address health inequities provide an opportunity that I have never experienced in my public health career. There are still challenges, but we have an opportunity to build momentum for the first time in decades if we can focus on implementing evidence-based strategies, demonstrating change and documenting our progress.

Researchers estimate more than 140,000 children in the United States experienced the death of a parent or grandparent caregiver between April 1, 2020 and June 30, 2021. The study highlights disturbing disparities in caregiver deaths by race and ethnicity. Hispanic, Black, and American Indian/Alaska Native children were at 1.1 to 4.5 times higher risk of losing a caregiver than non-Hispanic White children. These inequities result from structural and social conditions such as discrimination, living in under-resourced neighborhoods, barriers to accessing healthcare, experiencing food insecurity, and economic instability.

Experts from the Washington State Department of Health discuss understanding and addressing climate and equity concerns.

Economic security and well-being, job stability, access to safe and affordable housing, access to healthy and nutritious foods, and access to resources to manage mental and physical health—all of these things impact individual, family, and community health. The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally impacted each of these social determinants of health for many Americans. Furthermore, some communities and industries have faced harder economic impacts than others, including households with low incomes, non-white households, and households with children. Human services and public health leaders can collaborate to make sure we are rebuilding systems and programs in a way that creates healthier, more resilient families and communities.

As we celebrate National Rural Health Day this year, we are reminded of how important telehealth can be for public health and healthcare. Telehealth can minimize challenges faced by rural patients and communities—such as transportation, provider shortages, etc.—manage volume, increase the quality of healthcare, and lower overall costs by reducing readmissions and avoidable emergency department visits. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that access to reliable broadband is still a challenge and is a key social determinant of health for rural Americans.

On Dec. 3, the International Day of People with Disabilities commemorates disability rights and brings awareness to essential issues for those with disabilities by promoting the “well-being of persons with disabilities in all spheres of society.” While the ADA laid a critical foundation for disability rights, the work to ensure equitable access to services and needs continues, including access to state and local emergency preparedness and response activities like crisis communication, access to resources, allocation of vaccine and other medical countermeasures, and transportation.

This ASTHO report, which was co-authored with the World Institute on Disabilities, answers top questions around disability preparedness initiatives, and prioritizes inclusive planning while providing overarching guidance that can be applied to a variety of health and public health systems and structures. The report highlights key planning considerations to ensure public health emergency plans include people with disabilities, and is intended to be used in conjunction with other department and agency plans, as well as disability agencies in the local jurisdiction.

This blog shares key takeaways from the first Island Areas COVID-19 Health Equity Action Institutes.

During the early spread of COVID-19, the National Rural Health Association senior vice president Brock Slabach stated: “Before the pandemic, rural hospitals were struggling for survival. COVID-19 has put a spotlight on the fractures that already existed within rural communities in terms of their healthcare delivery.” These fractures also exposed the desperate need for ethical transformational leadership within rural healthcare delivery systems. The time to build these capacities is now.

In order to contain and mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic, widespread, rapid testing is key. Rampant and efficient testing determines who has the virus and who may be at risk of transmitting it, and allows for effective management of isolation and quarantine activities for the infected or exposed. While testing has increased over the past months across the country—by mid-July the number of tests reached between 700,000 to 800,000 per day, double the number of daily tests performed in May. However, that number is still well below the estimated 1.2 million daily tests needed to contain the outbreak and 4.3 million tests per day that would suppress the virus.

The emPOWER program provides federal data, mapping, and artificial intelligence tools, as well as training and resources, to help communities nationwide protect the health of at-risk Medicare beneficiaries who live independently and rely on electric-powered medical devices or receive certain medical services, such as outpatient dialysis, home-based oxygen service, hospice care or other types of home care medical support.

Access to quality internet may not be the first thing you think of when you think about health equity, but it is something that impacts many communities. In this interview, ASTHO chats with Craig Settles on ‘broadband redlining’, how pervasive it can be, and why the solutions will need to be community driven.