Why we need a Student Health Volunteer Corps

In 2007, 14 student volunteer health organizations in Los Angeles from UCLA alone helped over 12,000 community residents get health screenings and connect to needed health services. At other public land-grant universities across the country students are also helping to bridge the gap in access to preventive health care that keeps many community residents from being healthy. With better standards and coordination these programs could become a powerful new national initiative.

A national student volunteer health corps, modeled on the U.S. Public Health Service Corps and the Medical Reserve Corps, would bring needed preventive services into underserved communities. Research has repeatedly shown that a large percentage of students who volunteer in underserved neighborhoods go on to practice professionally in those communities, thus a volunteer health corps could increase the number of students who commit their clinical, research and policy careers to addressing health disparities.

Volunteers from student health organizations can conduct regular health fairs and other health-promotion activities, such as providing information on organ donation, insurance enrollment and monitoring chronic health conditions. In turn, many uninsured community residents have come to depend on volunteer-provided health services because they lack other affordable or available care options.

The BRITE Center’s research into the potential of leveraging student-run health organizations makes a series of recommendations about next steps for universities and policymakers, including:

• creating credit or non-credit academic courses to ensure up-to-date screening and health promotion training through university-based community service learning courses;
• developing best practices policies to include standards for training; guidelines for educating student volunteers on the specific needs of communities based on available data and research; and an assessment format so that the impact of efforts can be tracked; and
• supporting “Good Samaritan” laws in states that protect community- and student-based organizations against the threat of lawsuits.

Universities and state and federal volunteer and health agencies should consider creating a national student volunteer health corps as an innovative way to leverage current student work in communities for greater impact toward improving our nation’s health.

Related Links

Health Fair Planning Guide
As a way to bridge the gap in health resources and better leverage campus/community partnerships, the Center produced an online planning guide on how to create and run student-led community health fairs. The guide illustrates general steps to consider when planning a health fair. The guide includes community health assessments that can be used by community organizations to monitor and identify health disparities at the community level, as well as tools to conduct behavioral health education and health promotion. There are also health promotion materials in several languages and a listing of health fair activities for children. Learn more about creating a student-led health fair.

Civic Engagement: Addressing Social Determinants in Racial/Ethnic Minority Communities to Reduce and Prevent Health Disparities
This service learning seminar examines how addressing social determinants in racial/ethnic minority communities can reduce or eliminate physical and mental health disparities. Currently in racial and ethnic minority communities, health status of individuals can be a function of the built environment, exposure to pollutants and toxins, scarcity of supermarkets or stores with fresh produce and nutritional food, noise levels and a variety of other stressors and unhealthy conditions. Yet health interventions are often focused on individual level change or increases in access to health care with little in the way of changing risk environments. This course is designed to identify and provide opportunities to understand how to address social determinants related to negative health outcomes in racial/ethnic minority neighborhoods and communities and to experience how to use the social determinants literature in the service of collaborative activities with community organizations.
There are a number of social capital interventions that can help to reduce or eliminate these health disparities. The course is designed to highlight the role that the next generation of leaders can play in the creation of social capital and enhancement of social connectedness for improving the physical health and emotional well-being of racial/ethnic minorities in partnerships with community agencies and organizations.

Unequal Access Could Continue to Cost California’s Same-Sex Couples Their Health and Money

The White House has called for more equitable treatment of gay and lesbian couples, but without clear federal guidance on coverage expansions in health reform, employers’ decisions may be driven by discriminatory state laws. A recent BRITE Center study examining the effects of unequal access to health insurance for same-sex couples in California found that the exclusion of gay men and women from civil marriage, and the failure of domestic partnership benefits to provide insurance parity, contribute to why partnered lesbians and gay men are more than twice as likely to be uninsured.

Center researchers found that partnered gay men are less than half as likely as married heterosexual men to get employer-sponsored dependent coverage, and partnered lesbians have an even slimmer chance of getting dependent coverage compared to married heterosexual women. As a result of these much lower rates of employer-provided coverage, partnered lesbians and gay men are more than twice as likely to be uninsured as married heterosexuals.

An analysis of the California Health Benefits Survey suggests that more California employers are choosing to offer dependent coverage to domestic partners. However, it remains true that these benefits for domestic partners and same-sex spouses are not financially equivalent to those offered to heterosexual spouses as a result of the income tax discrimination imposed by federal law. Unlike heterosexual couples the federal and most state governments treat dependent benefits for domestic partners, civil-union spouses, and same-sex spouses as taxable earned income. This means that dependent coverage for same-sex partners is not equivalent in price to insurance provided for heterosexual married partners.

There are two concrete steps that policymakers can take to address these inequities:

• First, to address the disparities in coverage, federal agencies should clarify that group health plans would not lose their grandfathered status by expanding coverage to include domestic partners. With this clarification, employers might be more likely to broaden their definition of dependents.
• Second, to address in equities in the tax burden, policymakers should end the federal taxation of health insurance benefits for domestic partners and same-sex spouses.

Related Links

The Effects of Unequal Access to Health Insurance For Same-Sex Couples In California (pdf) (Health Affairs)

Adapting a Successful Health Promotion Model to Bridge the Gaps Between Researchers and Communities

A lack of knowledge about the historical and social context of the communities being studied robs researchers of valuable insights that should be integrated into their project design and results. And, being unfamiliar with the community increases the chance that research conducted with ethnic minorities may produce less benefit and have greater propensity to generate harm.

The BRITE Center is focused on bridging the gaps between researchers and the communities they work with through training and community partnerships. The center’s training programs for students and academic researchers that are planning to work with racial, ethnic and cultural minority communities focus on incorporating a community engagement and diversity lens in career preparation.

Yet new and innovative ways to help bridge the gap between academic research and diverse communities through formalized partnerships hold tremendous promise. The BRITE Center has formed strong, sustainable partnerships with community clinics and community-based organizations to conduct community-partnered health disparities research and to use findings to change systems that improve the health of disparities populations.

Two of those partners — the Center for Latino Community Health, Evaluation and Leadership Training developed by Cal State Long Beach and the National Council of La Raza — are partnering with the BRITE Center to develop a research certificate program for community health workers. The program would be based on the popular and effective promotores model that trains residents in communities to be highly trained grassroots health workers that educate their neighborhoods on disease prevention and health and well-being. These residents are recruited and hired from the communities where they live and their effectiveness hinges on the fact that they are trusted members of the community, they understand cultural barriers that the community faces and they are aware of the community’s health needs.

Applying this same model for academic research would better prepare and empower communities to be a part of the research process.

For more information on developments in this program, contact us.

Related links

Methods for Increasing Recruitment and Retention of Ethnic Minorities in Health Research Through Addressing Ethical Concerns (pdf)

Vickie Mays asked to serve on advisory board of grant to create a center to promote research and training on health inequities found among differing racial, economic and ethnic groups in the United States. займы на карту

Dr. Mays was interviewed for this article on the high infant mortality rate among African American women in Los Angeles county.

Read the full article here. hairy woman