Ohio Health Policy News

The Health Policy Institute of Ohio has released the latest edition of its biennial Health Value Dashboard, which found that Ohio ranks 44 on heath value compared to other states and D.C. (as displayed in the graphic above).

That means that Ohioans are living less healthy lives and spending more on health care than people in most other states.

The Dashboard is designed for policymakers and other public- and private-sector leaders to examine Ohio’s performance relative to other states, track change over time and identify and explore health disparities and inequities in Ohio. The report also highlights evidence-informed strategies that can be implemented to improve Ohio’s performance.

With more than 100 data metrics, the report can be a valuable tool as Ohio’s leaders continue to develop the state’s biennial budget over the next two months.

In the fifth edition of the Dashboard, HPIO identified three specific areas of strengths on which Ohio can build to create opportunities for improved health value in the state:

• Strengthen Ohio’s workforce: Ohio can build upon recent success in attracting employers in high-growth industries to strengthen the workforce and reduce poverty
• Foster mental well-being: Ohio can build upon expertise with, and community response to, the addiction crisis to become a national leader in behavioral health
• Improve healthcare effectiveness: Ohio can build upon strengths in access to care to reinvigorate approaches to improving outcomes and controlling healthcare spending

People all over the world lost confidence in the importance of routine childhood vaccines against killer diseases like measles and polio during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new report from UNICEF (Source: “People lost faith in childhood vaccines during COVID pandemic, UNICEF says,” Reuters, April 20).

In 52 of the 55 countries surveyed, the public perception of vaccines for children declined between 2019 and 2021, according to a report from the UN agency.

The data was a "worrying warning signal" of rising vaccine hesitancy amid misinformation, dwindling trust in governments and political polarization, UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, said.

"We cannot allow confidence in routine immunizations to become another victim of the pandemic," Catherine Russell, UNICEF executive director, said in a statement. "Otherwise, the next wave of deaths could be of more children with measles, diphtheria or other preventable diseases.”

Three years after the COVID-19 pandemic began, the healthcare field in Ohio and across the country continues to be challenged by worker shortages, which threaten the quality of care (Source: “3 years since COVID got here, health care remains changed,” Dayton Daily News, March 12).

Even prior to the pandemic, shortages of medical staff were linked to the quality of patient of care, medical errors and increased risks of dying, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing.

In response to the shortage, Ohio hospitals are working to address employee burnout, attract new talent and fill gaps by other means, including innovation with telehealth options. The American Hospital Association said their members also contract with outside agencies to fill gaps, but they say prices with those agencies have risen dramatically from what they were prior to the pandemic.

Maternal death rates surged by nearly 40% during the second year of the pandemic, widening disparities as Black women again faced alarmingly high, disproportionate rates, a new federal analysis shows (Source: “The rate of women dying in childbirth surged by 40%. These deaths are preventable.,” Columbus Dispatch, March 16).  

In 2021, there were about 33 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births – a 38% increase from the year before, according to the report released Thursday from the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Experts say COVID-19 likely contributed to the increases, but that the sobering rates continue to reveal deep flaws in health systems, such as structural racism, implicit bias and communities losing access to care. 

Most maternal deaths – which happen during pregnancy, labor or within 42 days of birth, per the CDC – are preventable. The United States' maternal death rate continues to be higher than other wealthy, developed countries, and the new data shows a roughly 60% increase in overall rates in 2021 from 2019, the year before the start of the pandemic.

States, community groups and food banks are scrambling to help families cope and gear up for an expected wave of food hardship following the end of pandemic-related benefits in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps (Source: “States Strive to Help SNAP Recipients Cope With Lower Benefits,” Pew Stateline, Feb. 28).

The average SNAP participant in states (including Ohio) that still had emergency allotments as of February will receive $90 less a month in benefits, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

In March 2020, as COVID-19 swept the nation and the economy shut down, Congress gave states the authority to ease application and eligibility requirements for SNAP and to hike benefits with temporary emergency allotments.

Children experienced learning deficits during the Covid pandemic that amounted to about one-third of a school year’s worth of knowledge and skills, according to a new global analysis, and had not recovered from those losses more than two years later (Source: “Students Lost One-Third of a School Year to Pandemic, Study Finds,” New York Times, Jan. 30).

Learning delays and regressions were most severe in developing countries and among students from low-income backgrounds, researchers said, worsening existing disparities and threatening to follow children into higher education and the work force.

The analysis, published Monday in the journal Nature Human Behavior and drawing on data from 15 countries, provided the most comprehensive account to date of the academic hardships wrought by the pandemic. The findings suggest that the challenges of remote learning — coupled with other stressors that plagued children and families throughout the pandemic — were not rectified when school doors reopened.

Deaths due to substance abuse, particularly of alcohol and opioids, rose sharply among older Americans in 2020, the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, as lockdowns disrupted routines and isolation and fear spread, federal health researchers reported on Wednesday (Source: “Deaths From Substance Abuse Rose Sharply Among Older Americans in 2020,” New York Times, Nov. 30).

Deaths from opioids increased among Americans aged 65 and older by 53% in 2020 over the previous year, the National Center for Health Statistics found. Alcohol-related deaths, which had already been rising for a decade in this age group, rose by 18%.

Alcohol and opioid deaths remained far less common among older people than among those middled-aged and younger, and rates had been rising in all groups for years. But the pronounced uptick surprised government researchers.

Physiological changes that occur with aging leave older adults more vulnerable to the ill effects of alcohol and drugs, as metabolism and excretion of substances slow down, increasing the risk of toxicity. Smaller amounts have bigger effects, researchers have found.

New evidence suggests that the shrinking gap in U.S. COVID-19 racial death disparities is being driven by political division and increasing total deaths — mostly among white people — rather than by decreasing deaths among Black Americans (Source: “Study: US political divide may help explain shrinking racial COVID death gap,” Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, University of Minnesota, Nov. 1).

According to a new University of Wisconsin and UCLA study published in PLOS One, Black people still bear a larger COVID-19 death burden than white people, despite a relatively younger population, but suggest that a wider political chasm likely drove more deaths in the latter group as the pandemic evolved.

Researchers examined COVID-19 death disparities since the early months of the pandemic when Black Americans had far higher death rates than their white peers.

Black and Hispanic Americans are much more likely to work in jobs that must be done in person, leading to much higher exposure to the virus. "That didn't change as the racial differences in the mortality rate shifted," lead author Adeline Lo said. "Other factors — like geographical distribution, healthcare access, income equality — that contributed to the initial higher rate of Black deaths didn't go away either."

What did change was that levels of concern about COVID and adherence to protective public health measures (eg, lockdowns, closures, prohibitions on gathering) widened along political lines, with increasing deaths among white Americans. After initially issuing similar state mandates in the first few weeks of the pandemic, within one month, Republican-controlled states began lifting public health restrictions, lessening virus containment and leading white deaths to surpass those of Black people from April to October 2020.

People of color with a COVID-19 diagnosis were much less likely to receive Paxlovid and other treatments than white patients, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (Source: “CDC data: People of color much less likely to receive Paxlovid, other COVID treatments,” The Hill, Oct. 27).
 
The CDC findings are consistent across all age groups and underscore the persistent disparities surrounding access to COVID-19 treatments, especially the antiviral pill Paxlovid. Paxlovid is the most commonly prescribed medication and the preferred outpatient therapeutic for eligible patients, according to the CDC.
 
During a four-month period from April to July 2022, Paxlovid treatment was 36% lower among Black patients relative to white patients and 30% lower among Hispanic patients relative to non-Hispanic patients, according to the study.