May 10, 2023
The Alliance for Women’s Health & Prevention is committed to advancing policy that drives equitable access and prevents the burden and progression of disease for all women and girls. We drive and support policy statements and advocacy letters addressed to key leaders that preserve and protect equitable access to high-quality preventive health care and the promotion of disease prevention for all women and girls. AWHP addresses preventive health policy issues by working with a broad coalition of health providers, educators, patient groups, provider organizations, policymakers, and health officials around a wide range of issues.
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Medicaid Unwinding
Medicaid Unwinding could cause the largest Medicaid losses in history, with disproportionate harm experienced by communities of color, mothers, and children. To prevent a civil rights and health equity disaster, over 200 healthcare, civil rights, and community groups are urging the Biden-Harris administration to make the strongest possible use of the powers recently granted by Congress for holding states accountable to preserve eligible families’ healthcare. Click here to read the letter.
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Osteoporosis Prevention: Create a Post-Fracture Care Code to Prevent Future Fractures
Too many patients are not getting the care they need to prevent a future, potentially catastrophic fracture due to failure to identify a fracture as a sentinel event and lack of a reimbursement mechanism to adequately capture the care coordination, diagnostic, treatment planning, and follow‐up services that patients need. We join other organizations in calling on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to update Medicare coding and payment policies to establish a care coordination payment mechanism to address underlying osteoporotic bone fragility and other elements of future fracture risk (e.g., fall risk, medication adherence, identification of secondary causes of bone fragility) in patients suffering a presumptive osteoporotic fracture. This holistic, coordinated approach, known as fracture liaison service (FLS), is internationally recognized as the “gold standard” for preventing subsequent fractures. Learn more here.
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Revise OMB’s 1997 Statistical Policy Directive No. 15
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announced an update to its Statistical Policy Directive No. 15 (Standards for Maintaining, Collecting, and Presenting Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity) — which provides minimum standards around data collection across federal agencies.
This update is critical since equity in access to the data collection process, as well as assuring that all population cohorts are reflected in data, is at the crux of systemic equity. The value of comprehensive data on a full range of populations and population cohorts cannot be overstated. Standardized, precise data create opportunities for insurers, health care providers, employers, and patient advocates to design and implement targeted solutions to better meet the needs of perpetually underserved groups.
We joined other patient advocacy, health care, and business leadership organizations to share recommendations that will help to advance a stakeholder-informed data equity movement that includes engagement with federal agencies, employers, labor, health systems, clinicians, and historically under-represented populations. Learn more here.