Introduction
Welcome to the Fall 2020 newsletter. You can find past newsletters with additional background materials, and different stories and initiatives on my website and in my LinkedIn articles or posts. Join me in identifying and coordinating initiatives that advance health, health equity and community and healthcare redesign.
Shannah’s Insights and Reflections
This newsletter covers September, October and part of November 2020. It proves that if you wait long enough there is new hope and a new potential framework for addressing growing U.S. challenges. COVID19 and our needed racial reckoning have been magnifiers for health disparities and inequities that have always existed. They are driven by inadequate living conditions for a majority of our country that have gotten worse due to COVID19 and the economic downturn.
We currently have an administration that gave up on addressing the pandemic and the drivers of disparities. The Biden Harris administration (B-H) is already taking on the critical challenges we face for everyone in the US regardless of race, ethnicity or political affiliation.
My greatest fear is that a divided Congress and country will make it hard to move ahead quickly, but I anticipate that B-H will take a page from the current administration and use executive orders to leverage the full breadth of the executive branch’s administrative powers.
My overall takeaway from this extended period of time is Community, Community, Community, whatever we do it has to empower and invest at the community level in a way that acknowledges, eliminates and makes amends for discriminant and disparate services, treatment and opportunity. It should also strive for improvements and solutions that pool investments at the community level, rather than those driven by individual health systems or plans.
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