When speaking of healthcare disparities, it is normal to speak of commonly impacted groups such as women or African-Americans. The diseases or disorders that are commonly the focus of such policy and strategy are things like diabetes, heart disease and so forth. However, this brief report shall represent a change of pace in that something else has reared its head this year. That something has been much more virulent and nasty than is normally seen. That, of course, would be the flu. Flu season this year has been especially nasty and the same factors that commonly cause vulnerable classes to suffer more from diabetes and heart disease, just to name two, also impact them when it comes to the flu. While some may think that getting flu shots is a waste of time, the number of dead and severely debilitated just this year proves otherwise.
Analysis
The healthcare policy change that should happen when it comes to the flu is two-pronged in nature. First, the affected classes and people that are not getting the flu vaccine should be pressed to get one. Whatever the limiting factors happen to be should be removed from being barriers. Depending on the situation, it might be general access to care, transportation, cost or other things. However, the flu vaccines are readily available and cost is not nearly the issue that it could be with other things. The other prong would be improving the vaccine so that “missing” the strain that is prevalent in a given year does not have the rather negative outcomes that it had this year or any similar year....
In short, there must be a push to help the general performance of the vaccine in addition to getting the proper penetration into the patient pool, inclusive of the vulnerable groups that are less likely to get the vaccine in the first place. This is very much an initiative that is centered on public and community health. The implicaitons are public-wide but the manner in which these gaps are resolved will need to be on the community level in many instances. The CDC and other groups can trumpet the importance of getting the vaccine all day. However, community-level interventions will be necessary to truly make progress. There is not currently a prevalent “bill” or piece of legislation to change the flu shot process. However, there certainly needs to be one. Whatever needs to be done to increase work on a more effective flu shot must be completed. This includes dedicating the proper people, money, time and other resources. If this needs to be an explicit part of law so that nobody has the ability or option to divert resources elsewhere, then that is what needs to happen. No administrator or legislator in a proverbial ivory tower should have the ability to divert away from this priority (Woods, 2018).
The federal “champion” behind this effort needs to be no less than the Secretary of Health and Human Services. The President needs to dedicate direct attention to this just like what is already happening with the opioid crisis. The health department and health public policy leaders in the respective states should follow…
