FAIR Health Awarded Grants from The New York Community Trust and New York State Health Foundation

June 17, 2021

Thanks to the generous support of The New York Community Trust and New York State Health Foundation, FAIR Health is embarking on two separate grant-funded initiatives to promote health insurance literacy and support healthcare decision making among communities of color in New York. Both projects will further advance FAIR Health’s efforts to increase patient engagement and promote transparency in healthcare costs and health insurance information.

The New York Community Trust
In May, FAIR Health received a grant from The New York Community Trust in support of FH® Learn, Access and Understand Navigation of Choices in Healthcare (LAUNCH) Español. Building on FAIR Health’s prior grant-funded efforts to empower healthcare consumers, FH LAUNCH Español is an educational initiative that will promote health insurance literacy among bilingual and Spanish-dominant Hispanic and Latinx communities in the New York metropolitan area.

To help these consumers navigate the healthcare system, FH LAUNCH Español will promote FH® Consumer Classroom, a free mobile app (available on the Apple App Store and Google Play) that educates users on health insurance and healthcare quality through articles, videos and a glossary, as well as key resources and interactive games to support learning. The user-friendly app also links to FAIR Health’s nationally recognized FH® Medical and Dental Cost Lookup Tools, which enable consumers to estimate the typical costs of medical and dental procedures.

To promote the app within Hispanic/Latinx communities, FAIR Health will develop an English- and Spanish-language educational campaign for FH LAUNCH Español. Through culturally relevant messaging and diverse channels—including digital-, organizational- and community-based outreach—the campaign will target young adults, who often demonstrate a limited understanding of health insurance as they age out of their parents’ health plans, along with formerly incarcerated individuals reentering society. Notably, FAIR Health will engage an advertising agency that serves Hispanic and Latinx communities and collaborate with organizations that serve these specific target audiences to promote the app.

New York State Health Foundation
In April, the New York State Health Foundation awarded FAIR Health a grant to launch its next project promoting shared decision making (SDM) in healthcare discussions. The initiative—which will be conducted in collaboration with Dr. Chima Ndumele, professor at Yale University and a member of the FAIR Health Academic Advisory Board—will advance SDM among communities of color in New York State, and, in so doing, empower them to become partners in their healthcare decisions.

SDM, the discussion between patients and/or caregivers and healthcare providers regarding treatment options, has been known to increase patient engagement and reduce healthcare costs. FAIR Health has spearheaded two prior SDM initiatives with support from The New York Community Trust and The Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation. In March 2020, FAIR Health launched a set of consumer-facing SDM tools, or decision aids, that combine clinical and cost information for a set of palliative care scenarios on fairhealthconsumer.org. In April 2021, FAIR Health released a free, companion, provider-oriented educational platform, fairhealthprovider.org, which offers informative content that explains to providers how to engage patients and/or caregivers in decision-making discussions through the use of SDM tools.

Building on the expertise and connections gleaned from those projects, the 18-month initiative funded by the New York State Health Foundation will involve the development and dissemination of decision aids with clinical and cost information for conditions especially pertinent to minority patients. FAIR Health will promote awareness of the new SDM tools among target populations through collaboration with organizations and professionals that serve patients of color throughout the state. The new decision aids are set to launch next year, followed by an evaluation period that will help inform future SDM-related initiatives.