Welcome to Texas Women Health Watch

Dear policy watchers,

Health care is an increasingly prominent issue for debate with the advent of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Locally, this has manifested itself in debates regarding the current Texas legislative session. Specifically, preventative care for women is a vital issue for the health of our city, state, and nation.

Here are some key points regarding health care in our state:
• As of January 2011, there is an estimated budget shortfall of $27 billion (Center for Public Policy Priorities, 2011)
• Medicaid alone was short at least $7.6 billion, but if you include the loss of federal matching funds, it’s at least $18 billion (CPPP, 2011)
• Minority women have a life expectancy that is five years shorter than their white counterparts according to a recent study by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, or AHRQ (2010).
• Black and Hispanic women are much more likely than their white counterparts to have an abortion, because they have higher rates of unplanned pregnancies due to a lack of access to family planning resources (Cohen, 2008).
• Similarly, in 2007, 22.7% of pregnant minority women received either late or no prenatal care, compared to 11.1% of white women (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2009).

We created this blog as a response to these statistics. Our goal is to better understand health care in our state, and to educate others about this important issue. In this blog, we plan to examine legislation pertaining to preventative care for women, and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of health care in our state. We’ll try to keep the legislative jargon to a minimum and try to make this understandable for our readers.

Who are we? Good question.

Thy and Kristen (otherwise known as Team TK) are MSSW students at the University of Texas at Austin. We are currently enrolled in a social policy class taught by the infamous Miguel Ferguson (you might spot him around UT campus on his French scooter thingy-mabob).

Team TK OUT!

References:

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality [AHRQ]. (2010). Health care for minority women: Recent findings. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Rockville, MD. AHRQ Pub. No. 11-P005. Retrieved February 5, 2011 from http://www.ahrq.gov/research/minority.htm.

Cohen, S.A. (2008). Abortion and women of color: The bigger picture. Guttmacher Policy Review, 11(3), 2-12.

The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. (2009). Putting women’s health care disparities on the map: Examining racial and ethnic disparities at the state level. Retrieved February 5, 2011 from http://www.kff.org/minorityhealth/upload/7886.pdf.