Study to evaluate ethnic, racial disparities in care

Neighborhood Health Plan of Rhode Island and two partners have received a two-year, $261,000 grant from a research and tracking program funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to study racial and ethnic disparities in mental health care in the state.
The grant comes from the Finding Answers: Disparities Research for Change program. The project will also involve Beacon Health Strategies LLC in Woburn, Mass., and Butler Hospital.
The partners plan to evaluate current efforts and develop new strategies to improve the care of Latino patients suffering from depression, a condition for which evidence of racial and ethnic disparities in care is strong and the recommended standard of care is clear.
“The funds from this grant will allow us to engage depression care managers to monitor existing patients currently undergoing depression and stress care, evaluate the effectiveness of their care, and recommend successful treatment strategies,” said Beth Ann Marootian, director of business development at Neighborhood.
The results of the research will help Finding Answers and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation better understand what works – or does not work – to improve health care for minority patients, those involved in the project said.
Neighborhood and 10 other receiving grants at this time will provide information to Finding Answers regarding obstacles to and solutions for implementing a tested intervention, startup and maintenance costs for the intervention, and staff training needs.
Finding Answers will evaluate the results and related information and then inform health care stakeholders – doctors, hospitals and health plans – about promising interventions that demonstrate potential to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in health care.
“We hope that our findings will help raise awareness and eliminate some of the fears and stereotypes that exist within the Latino community regarding the use of medication as a form of treatment for depression and stress,” said Jim Spink, vice president for external operations and public policy for Beacon Health Strategies and a co-principal investigator.
“The research project, if found to be effective, will provide a cost-effective depression intervention that should help reduce the disparities in depression treatment and outcome among Latino patients,” said Ivan W. Miller, PhD, director of psychosocial research at Butler Hospital and also a co-principal investigator.
The 10 other grant recipients are the Choctaw Nation Health Services Authority in Oklahoma, Cooper Green Hospital in Alabama, Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates in Massachusetts, the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers, Morehouse School of Medicine in Georgia, the Olive View-UCLA Education Research Institute in California, the Regents of the University of California, the University of Southern California, Westside Health Services Inc. in New York, and the Yale University School of Medicine.
Founded by Rhode Island’s community health centers in 1994, Neighborhood is a nonprofit health management organization devoted entirely to serving Medicaid beneficiaries, especially those in RIte Care, the state’s Medicaid managed-care program for children and families.
Neighborhood has more than 75,000 members, including a large share of Latinos and other minorities.