To mark Minority Health Month, the Alliance for Women’s Health and Prevention (AWHP) partnered with the American Nurses Association and the American Kidney Fund to bring women leaders together for a powerful conversation on health policy. The focus: how to break down barriers and improve access to preventive care for women and girls—particularly in communities of color. These ongoing collaborations are helping us push health equity forward. From this latest dialogue, we’ve identified three urgent policy priorities designed to put women of color at the forefront of preventive health.
Spreading Awareness
Building awareness around health conditions—particularly those that disproportionately affect women of color—is a critical first step in closing gaps in preventive care. One example is obstructive sleep apnea (OSA)—a condition that often goes underdiagnosed in women, particularly Black women.
“Equitable health education must raise awareness—both among clinicians and patients—about the warning signs of OSA in women,” said Dr. Monica Mallampalli, CEO of the Alliance of Sleep Apnea Partners (ASAP). She also highlighted the need for broader national campaigns and targeted advocacy efforts to bring sleep apnea and conditions like it into the spotlight. These strategies can be applied across a range of diseases that disproportionately impact women of color and are often underrepresented in public discourse and research.
Continuing Medical Education
Several of our partners underscored the importance of policies that champion comprehensive, continuing education for healthcare providers as a means of improving the quality of life for women of color. According to the American Institute of Health Care Professionals, continuing education not only helps healthcare professionals with career advancement but also improves patient outcomes.
A study in the journal BMC Medical Education showed that over two-thirds of healthcare providers surveyed noted expense as a barrier to accessing continuing medical education, while over half noted travel time as a major barrier. These barriers can be exacerbated for healthcare providers in rural settings and solutions like virtual distance learning can help increase education access.
The medical field is constantly being enhanced with innovations, and mandating continuous education helps healthcare providers avoid errors and mitigate risk while taking advantage of new treatments on the market for their patients. Our partners emphasized the need for increased preparation for nurses at all levels, and WomenHeart CEO Celina Gorre specifically prioritized continuing education for healthcare providers on women’s heart health—a topic that is less understood than men’s heart health and disproportionately impacts Black, Hispanic, South Asian, and American Indian/Alaska Native women.
Removing Barriers to Care Access
A final policy priority proposed by Donna Cryer, Founder of the Global Liver Institute, is promoting legislation and regulation that remove barriers to care access. She named several opportunities to remove access barriers, including improving transportation to and from health centers, expanding low- and no-cost healthcare options, and increasing the number of culturally competent, trusted healthcare providers in areas that need them most. Cryer said many of these factors could be addressed by mobile and workplace care sites that operate on early mornings, evenings, and weekends—an innovative idea that would push forward health equity nationwide.
This Minority Health Month—and every month—AWHP and the organizations we collaborate with remain committed to advancing ideas that prioritize preventive care for women of color in policy conversations. We invite you to join us in our advocacy work by learning about our policy pillars on our website here.
To follow along with us through Minority Health Month and beyond, check out AWHP on LinkedIn and X.