The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA

Abstract #47672

Chris Gibbons, MD, MPH, Urban Health Institute, Johns Hopkins University, 111 Market St., Suite 850, Baltimore, MD 21202-4036, 410-895-1104, mgibbons@jhsph.edu

Over the past decade CMS has increasingly tried to moved away from a crisis oriented approach to policy development to a paradigm that involves 1) assessing the scientific evidence, 2) evaluating cost-effectiveness and feasibility in demonstration projects and then 3) formulating evidence-based Medicare policy. CMS is also exploring ways to improve prevention and health promotion, for example, by evaluating smoking cessation and health risk appraisals via its Healthy Aging initiative. Recently CMS was legislatively charged by the "Cancer Prevention and Treatment Demonstration for Ethnic and Racial Minorities" to produced an Evidence Report that outlines the evidence base for the most promising interventions to improve health and reduce disparities in cancer prevention and treatment. This report has recently been authored by the Schneider Institute for Health Policy, Heller School, Brandeis University. In addition, this legislative initiative directs CMS to test, via state and national level demonstrations, the feasibility and cost-efficacy of the interventions and recommendations identified by the evidence report. Two demonstrations will be conducted in each of four racial and ethnic minority populations. In each group, one demonstration will have a rural focus and one an urban focus. One final demonstration will be conducted in the Philippines-Guam basin. Formal evaluations of each demonstration will document provider and beneficiary satisfaction, costs and outcome-based effectiveness of the interventions. In this session, the authors discuss the findings and recommendations of the evidence report and the implications of the report, in the context of current health promotion and primary prevention benefits under Medicare policy.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe how this initiative fits within the CMS paradigm of Healthy Aging for all Medicare beneficiaries.
• Discuss the health care policy implications of the findings from the evidence.
• Apply the recommendations to the design and development of local disparities reduction interventions.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.