Climate change and health equity

Climate change poses current and increasing threats to human health. As the climate continues to warm, the risks to human health will grow, exacerbating existing health threats and creating new public health challenges. HHS is committed to taking actions across the whole department to protect the health and wellbeing of all people, especially those most vulnerable.
Many disadvantaged communities currently bear the brunt of climate-induced health risks from extreme heat, poor air quality, flooding, extreme weather events, and vector borne diseases.

Considerations for addressing bias in AI

Health equity is a primary goal of healthcare stakeholders: patients and their advocacy groups, clinicians, other providers and their professional societies, bioethicists, payors and value based care organizations, regulatory agencies, legislators, and creators of artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML)-enabled medical devices. Lack of equitable access to diagnosis and treatment may be improved through new digital health technologies, especially AI/ML, but these may also exacerbate disparities, depending on how bias is addressed. 

Assessing barriers in health insurance

Typologies traditionally used for international comparisons of health systems often conflate many system characteristics. To capture policy changes over time and by service in health systems regulation of public and private insurance, we propose a database containing explicit, standardized indicators of policy instruments. As data collection is still underway, we present here the theoretical bases and methodology adopted, with a focus on the rationale underpinning the study instruments.