BUSY DAY......

Today we went into detail of the Homework assigned on Wednesday by Alek:

1. Familiarize yourselves with questions from the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS).

2. Watch President O'bama's speech tonight on his national health plan

3. Familiarize yourself with the Institutional Review Board (IRB):

The CHIS was a helpful website that gave me and Lena a better understanding of what to expect when putting together a survey. The 2007 survey was a telephone survey and was EXTREMELY long. I would find it difficult for a person to stay on the phone for more than 30 minutes for a survey, especially a sensitive subject like health. Alek asked us to develop our own questions around the topic of health insurance and health access for Pacific Islanders. This was a great topic to conduct surveys in because it wasn’t too specific and the questions could be general.

Familiarize yourselves with questions from the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS). Identify questions from CHIS that would be relevant to include on your health access survey for PIFA (http://www.chis.ucla.edu/). There are a series of questions in CHIS regarding socio-demographics and health access (health insurance). Also think of questions that were not asked in CHIS that may be relevant to Pacific Islanders that you would want to include in your survey. For example, Ono suggested CAM use (CAM - complementary and alternative medicine).

Commonly found Diseases in our Communities:

1. Diabetes

2. Cancer

3. Obesity

4. Heart Disease

These next questions are about your health.

- Would you say that in general your health is excellent very good, good, fair, or poor?

- {Other than during pregnancy, has/Has} a doctor ever told you that you have diabetes or sugar diabetes?

- Has a doctor ever told you that you have high blood pressure?

- Has a doctor ever told you that you have any kind of heart disease? AB34

- Have you ever used Complementary and alternative medicine? (ie. Tea leaves, traditional massages, etc)

few more questions about you.

- In what country were you born?

- Are you a citizen of the United States? AH39

- About how many years have you lived in the United States? AH41

Health Insurance

- Is there a place that you usually go to when you are sick or need advice about your health?

- {What kind of place do you go to most often—a medical/Is your doctor in a private} doctor's office, a clinic or hospital clinic, an emergency room, or some other place?

- During the past 12 months, did you visit a hospital emergency room for your own health? AH12

- MediCARE is a health insurance program for people 65 years and older or persons with certain disabilities. At this time, are you covered by MediCARE? AI1

What is the name of your MediCARE HMO plan?

- Does anyone else, such as an employer, a union, or professional organization pay all or some portion of the premium or cost for this health plan?

- Do you pay any or all of the premium or cost for this health plan? Do not include the cost of any co-pays or deductibles you or your family may have had to pay. AH57

2. Watch President O'bama's speech tonight on his national health plan (CNN ink: http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/09/obama.speech/index.html). Identify at least 2 points in his speech that you understood and at least 2 points that you did not understand.

The plan’s three basic goals:

5. It will provide more security and stability to those who have health insurance.

6. It will provide insurance to those who don’t.

7. And it will slow the growth of health care costs for our families, our businesses, and our government.

“ What this plan will do is to make the insurance you have work better for you. Under this plan, it will be against the law for insurance companies to deny you coverage because of a preexisting condition. As soon as I sign this bill, it will be against the law for insurance companies to drop your coverage when you get sick or water it down when you need it most.”

- As mentioned in during Sora’s lecture, many insurance companies have denied coverage because of preexisting conditions. If a law or regulation that would limit/rid of this trend, many customers would be saved.

“ The only thing this plan would eliminate is the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud, as well as unwarranted subsidies in Medicare that go to insurance companies – subsidies that do everything to pad their profits and nothing to improve your care. And we will also create an independent commission of doctors and medical experts charged with identifying more waste in the years ahead.”

- Since Medicare is a government funded program, how come there are not strict regulations on insurance companies if 16% of GDP is focused on Health Care?

“In fact, based on Congressional Budget Office estimates, we believe that less than 5% of Americans would sign up.”

- If this campaign was previously researched shouldn’t there be stastistics & data on the results of these plans already? Why would we want a program that projects that less than 5% of Americans would sign up? Is it really worth all the debate/research/funds?

“So let me set the record straight. My guiding principle is, and always has been, that consumers do better when there is choice and competition. Unfortunately, in 34 states, 75% of the insurance market is controlled by five or fewer companies. In Alabama, almost 90% is controlled by just one company. Without competition, the price of insurance goes up and the quality goes down.

And it makes it easier for insurance companies to treat their customers badly – by cherry-picking the healthiest individuals and trying to drop the sickest; by overcharging small businesses who have no leverage; and by jacking up rates.”

- These companies in Alabama, & the 33 other states that have less 5 or fewer companies , aren’t they forming an oligopoly? How can people compete with a company who has limited competition?

3. Familiarize yourself with the Institutional Review Board (IRB): http://www.ogc.fullerton.edu/irb/irb.htm. Take a look at the application. We will be filling out an IRB application for your survey on Friday.

· CSUF IRB applications are reviewed at three levels: Exempt, Expedited and Full Committee.

· CSUF students, faculty or staff who conduct research involving human subjects when such data will be available for generalized public knowledge and/or publication requires review and approval by CSUF IRB.

Be ready to answer what is an IRB:

Institutional Review Board (“CSUF IRB”) is a University committee appointed by the President to review and safeguard the use of human participants in research pursuant to Federal Code of Regulations (45 CFR 46).

Why we need an IRB?

CSUF receives federal funding and has agreed to adhere to the Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) regulations for use of human subjects in research and has signed an assurance letter with the Department of Health and Human Services that all CSUF protocols which involve human subjects will be reviewed for compliance with these regulations before each researcher collects data.

CSUF students, faculty or staff who conduct research involving human subjects when such data will be available for generalized public knowledge and/or publication requires review and approval by CSUF IRB.