2022 MACKINAC POLICY CONFERENCE EDITION
Michigan Chronicle
Vol. 85 – No. 38 | May 25-31, 2022
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Working for Equity and Participation in Health Care and Beyond Creating healthier communities with healthy futures is essential to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan’s culture. Each of us at Blue Cross is personally invested in our company’s mission because our members are our neighbors, friends and family. We strive to reflect those we serve. For Michigan to be healthy and strong, we must embrace our diversity, live with empathy and ensure that everyone has a seat at the table. These are pillars within our company. That’s why the theme of this year’s Mackinac Policy Conference -- “The Business Community’s Changing Civic Role in Polarizing Daniel J. Loepp Times” -- resonates with us. The annual gathering of state, regional and national thought leaders will focus on: • Advancing diversity as a strength • Utilizing civility and facts in public discourse • Building a culture of empathy • Advocating for the fundamental tenets of American democracy. For 83 years, Blue Cross has been committed to improving the health of all Michiganders and driven by our belief that everyone deserve access to high-quality, affordable health care. However, we know disparities exist across our state and throughout the country. That’s why we’ve been leading efforts to look at the disparities in health and health care services for more than a decade to promote positive changes for the physical and behavioral health of our members and communities. During the pandemic, we increased our commitment to building awareness and addressing health care disparities. This included fully implementing our own Office of Health and Health Care Disparities last year; the partnership spreads across our state to identify and resolve health care and other inequities that unfairly impair communities of color, LBTQ+ and people with disabilities. Part of our work of which I’m most proud is providing education about unconscious bias in health care delivery to more than 5,000 of our physician partners, helping improve the care patients receive. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan is a socially conscious company guided by a mission: to increase access to affordable health care and improve the health of our members and communities. Just like many longstanding companies, we’ve operated through ebbs and flows and challenging times. We’ve found that working with all of our stakeholders allows us to deliver the best outcomes for those we serve. We’ve made progress by putting emphasis on empathy, facts and civility; embracing and advocating for diversity; and supporting the tenets of American democracy, including equal access to voting and secure elections. Our successful partnerships have shown us that a civil, inclusive discourse gives us the best opportunity to generate impactful outcomes. This year’s Mackinac Policy Conference offers the leaders and influencers of Michigan’s business community a valuable chance to expand our collective dialogue and develop more common ground. United, we can take a leading role in promoting brighter, equitable futures for all. Daniel J. Loepp is President and CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan
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Is Michigan Now a National Leader for Addressing
Healthcare Disparities in Black Communities? By Donald James
Senior Writer, Real Times Media
Long before the inception of COVID-19 and the ongoing pandemic, healthcare disparities were severely experienced in Black communities across Detroit, the state, and beyond. Nevertheless, the current pandemic has been a tremendous wake-up call to address the seriousness of healthcare disparities in Black communities across America, the world’s richest country. In Michigan, a sobering two-plus years of the pandemic revealed that African Americans represent nearly 14 percent of Michigan’s population but once accounted for 40 percent of the coronavirus deaths. What followed has been a textbook approach to how teamwork can and has made a difference in addressing health concerns and disparities in African American and other communities of color. Shortly after the pandemic began, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer saw the deadly number of African Americans becoming sick, hospitalized, and dying from COVID-19 in a state with approximately 1.35 million Black people. In Detroit, a majority Black major city with more than 550,000 Black people, the coronavirus and the healthcare neglect ripple effect were wreaking havoc from the east side to the west side of the Motor City. Through Executive Order No. 202055, Whitmer convened The Michigan Coronavirus Task Force on Racial Disparities, headed by Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist, Michigan’s first Black lieutenant governor. The Task Force, the first of its kind in America, consists of medical doctors, health experts, scientists, community organizers, educators, and legislators with marching orders to reduce racial disparities and speed up the state’s COVID-19 response to reach healthy outcomes across the board, particularly in Black and Brown communities.
task force member’s willingness to serve and create meaningful and lasting change,” said Gilchrist. “This report details the Michigan Coronavirus Taskforce on Racial Disparities’ progress on our short and long-term goals, and it presents our recommendations for collaborative policy and programming work with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and other state departments and agencies. Our recommendations recognize that systemic problems require systemic solutions.”
In March 2022, the State’s Coronavirus Racial Disparities Task Force released its findings, along with short and long-term goals that it believes will close the health and healthcare disparity gaps for Black, Brown, and other underserved groups.
Some key actionable takeaways from the Task Force’s report included reducing barriers to testing and expanding it in communities of color, developing culturally competent messaging for best practices of COVID-19 mitigation, improving the sharing of racial data collection, and improving access to healthcare for marginalized populations. In addition to the report making actionable recommendations for the current pandemic, it is also intended to help Michigan, and other states and localities, effectively prepare for addressing the next pandemic or public health crisis in a more racially equitable way that acknowledges and responds to the challenges that systemic racism presents.
“I am continually grateful for each
While the pandemic rages on, with
predictable and unpredictable peaks and valleys, the Task Force continues its work while meeting twice a month. “This Task Force was able to bring different energies, different thoughts, and different perspectives and experiences together to address and provide what people in the community really need in this critical pandemic,” said Task Force member Bridget Hurd, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan’s vice president of Inclusion and Diversity, Chief Diversity Officer, and leads the company’s Office of Health and Health Disparities, which focuses on achieving health equity through delivery and accessibility to care. Hurd said getting information to African American communities and others quickly and accurately remain critical to helping save lives. She said it is important to bust the myths that were prevalent in the Black community about the coronavirus and pandemic. “Early in the pandemic, there was a myth that Black people couldn’t get COVID-19,” recalled Hurd. “We developed reliable, consistent, and accurate information that we pushed out to our partners in the community, like
See HEALTHCARE DISPARITIES page A2
Roe V. Wade: The Racial and Economic Issues Within By Megan Kirk
TOOLKIT 2022
Keeping Workers and Customers During Tough Business
Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist, Bridget Herd; Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer, Inclusion and Diversity Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, Dr. Curtis L. Ivery; Chancellor and CEO of Wayne County Community College District, Dr. Roy Wilson M.D., M.S.; President Wayne State University
tential in education and have full bodily autonomy,” said Merissa Kovach, policy strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan.
The potential to overturn the historic Supreme Court ruling on reproductive rights, Roe v. Wade, has sparked both outrage and support from opposing sides. The leak from the United States Supreme Court has shown a very real attack on a woman’s right to choose and has left many feeling the sacred 1973 decision will soon be met with anti-abortion laws and regulations. As the world becomes well aware of the social and moral ramifications of the potential overturn, a new light is being shed on the debate. Some states, including Michigan, are now working to ensure women’s rights remain intact. Though all women can be impacted, Black women and other women of color are expected to suffer the
Shanay Watson-Whittaker
Merissa Kovach
consequences at a higher rate than their white counterparts. With medical access limited and trust waning, the world waits to see what the Supreme Court will decide and the domino effect it will have on communities of color.
marginalized people. The end game here is to ensure that folks who are most marginalized -- Black people, people of color, women [who] don’t have full autonomy over their bodies and can’t fully exercise all of their choices and that they can’t tap into their full economic potential – [that they reach] their full po-
“It very much intersects with the control of the bodies of all
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Black mothers are three times more likely to die in childbirth than any other demographic. Black women are also predisposed to endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome and fibroids. This, in combination with racial disparities in healthcare, could lead to elevated infant mortality rates for Black mothers. Criminally, African Americans and other people of color also stand the risk of higher rates of prosecution should Roe v. Wade be overturned. “We know who this directly impacts and dealing with the
See ROE
V. WADE page A2