Our Point of View
June 12, 2009
Kaiser Permanente Ads in Capitol Hill Publications Refocus Attention on the Issue of Health Care Disparities
With the issue of health disparities playing a key role in today's health care reform debate, Kaiser Permanente placed ads this week, in several Capitol Hill publications, that call for a national effort to address disparities in health care.
Click an image to download a pdf
The ads, which focus on health care disparities in the African American, Latino and Asian/Pacific Islander communities, note that Americans spend $2.5 trillion* on health care and yet millions of uninsured Americans forego care and get sick solely because they lack coverage. The ads, which label as "a national disgrace" the fact that tens of millions of Americans lack health care coverage, direct readers to Kaiser Permanente’s Web site for information about health care disparities in America: www.kp.org/healthdisparities.
Each print ad is headlined, “Health Care in America is Too Often Unequal.”
The ads coincide with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services releasing a new report about health disparities in America.
Kaiser Permanente actively seeks to reduce health care disparities in the communities it serves. Among Kaiser Permanente's efforts are:
- Earlier this week, Kaiser Permanente announced that it will ship a first-of-its kind, mobile medical vehicle to Hawaii, where it will be deployed this summer to improve health care access for thousands of Kaiser Permanente members and the uninsured. It's expected that 12,000 residents of the island of Hawaii, known to many as the "Big Island," will benefit from the broad range of screenings and services available, including mammograms, through the vehicle and its staff.
- Kaiser Permanente is providing $750,000 in grants to the Institute for Health Improvement's Open School, which provides free, virtual training and course work in quality improvement and patient safety for health care professionals.
- Kaiser Permanente has launched farmers markets at 30 of its facilities in six states. Several of those facilities operate in neighborhoods in which no other sources of fresh produce exists.
- Helping to address a shortage of health professionals in rural communities, Kaiser Permanente made a $2.4 million dollar grant to establish the University of Colorado Denver’s Interdisciplinary Rural Training and Service Program.
The latest health disparities ads ran today in these Washington, D.C., area publications: The Hill, Politico, Congress Daily AM, National Journal, and CQ Today. No online ads were scheduled.
The campaign follows a similar ad run in March. Both build on on an ad focusing on disparities in the African-American community that ran in the Oakland (Calif.) Tribune in November 2008.
View full-sized PDFs of all the ads by clicking the thumbnail images above. For more information, view Kaiser Permanente’s Health Disparities Web site, http://www.kp.org/healthdisparities.
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*The ad that was published in late 2008 quotes a figure of $2.3 trillion, which was the current estimate at the time of publication. The $2.5 trillion figure in the most recent ads is derived from more recent estimates.