Health disparities megacommunity: Creating a model to address the rising demand and cost of healthcare amongst baby boomers

Reducing minority health disparities (HD) would have saved $1.24 trillion between 2003 and 2006 including nearly $230 billion in direct medical care costs. Researchers have determined that HDs follow geographic lines. Geographic isolation, socio-economic status, health risk behaviors, and limited job opportunities contribute to HDs in rural communities. While 20% of the United States population lives in rural areas, higher rates of chronic illnesses and poor overall health are found in these communities. Also, AARP has detected migration patterns of baby boomers from urban to rural areas which has the potential to overwhelm the rural infrastructure where there are fewer resources to meet the demand for health care. To confront this ongoing issue, we developed a reproducible and transferrable Health Disparities Solutions Model (HDSM). Such a model will use analytics and information technology to align resources of potential stakeholders to address the inequities in a given geographical area. Our HDSM will allow a user to input a HD issue (i.e., access to care) and obtain a picture of how a selected geographic location's resources can be used to address the defined problem. When the model is run, the cross-walk of these variables output a structured report that identifies specific local entities with resources that can be utilized to reduce the HD within a targeted area. These entities could be traditional (e.g., hospital) or non-traditional (e.g., Wal-Mart). We can leverage predictive analytics within HDSM to identify stakeholders in non-local areas and create a roadmap that regional stakeholders can follow as they develop stakeholder networks and establish Megacommunities around HD-specific issues. HDSM will identify resource gaps using computation analysis. This will allow local leaders to consider efficient policies that can assist in reducing the various resource gaps that prevent improvement of health in their communities.