NextLevel Health Partners, Inc., Awards $25,000 To The Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force To Reduce Breast Cancer Care Inequities For Women Of Color
NextLevel Health Announces Commitment to Partner With Organizations To Reduce Health Inequities Across Cook County
CHICAGO, Nov. 1, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- NextLevel Health Partners, Inc., a Medicaid managed care company, today awarded $25,000 to the Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the fight against breast cancer inequalities in Metropolitan Chicago. The inaugural Health Disparities Champion Prize honors and supports the work the Task Force does to impact real reductions in health disparity outcomes across Cook County.
"The incredible work that the Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force is doing has a real, tangible impact on reducing health outcome disparities for low income people," says Dr. Cheryl Whitaker, CEO of NextLevel Health. "Breast cancer is a disease that doesn't discriminate between women of color or women with quality healthcare; we are investing in organizations whose impact is demonstrated by real data and ensuring that all women have access to comprehensive breast cancer treatment and care."
In 2017 a Cancer Causes & Control study concluded that Chicago is leading the country in closing the inequality in breast cancer mortality rates between African-American and white women due to the Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force efforts. From 2006 to 2013, the mortality rate from breast cancer among black women dropped from a 62% gap to a 39% gap, whereas the nationwide average has grown over this time to a 42% gap.
"Chicago's success in the last decade in reducing breast cancer disparities shows that such disparities are not inevitable," says Anne Marie Murphy, Ph.D., Executive Director of the Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force. "With NextLevel Health's support, together we can eliminate this death gap and ensure every woman has an equal chance at survival from breast cancer."
The Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force works with providers to identify mammography quality and improve follow-up care for patients who have an abnormality on their mammogram. Based at Rush University Medical Center, the Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force works with community organizations to better inform residents and connected individuals to care.
NextLevel Health also announced a strategic partnership with the Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force to reduce barriers to equitable, quality healthcare for African American women across Chicago. NextLevel Health offers a cloud-based health information technology (HIT) system that allows users to see their health information, health profile, medications, doctor's visits and tests, as well as provides access to health education, including videos and articles. Every day, NextLevel Health looks for more results-driven partners who have data to support outcomes improvement.
For more information, visit www.nextlevelhealthil.com.
About NextLevel Health Partners, Inc.:
NextLevel Health is a managed care health plan for Cook County residents with Medicaid and for Cook County residents in the Managed Long-Term Services and Supports (MLTSS) program (Medicare and Medicaid). NextLevel Health Partners, Inc. assists in managing and coordinating your care with a deeper understanding of you, your community, and your health, one-on-one, right in your own community. NextLevel Health Partners best serves their community by increasing access to health care, building strong partnerships in the neighborhoods they serve and by understanding important local issues.
About the Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force:
The Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force (The Task Force) is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the fight against structural racism, in particular as it pertains breast cancer inequalities in Metropolitan Chicago. Over the past 10 years, the Task Force has concentrated its efforts on reducing racial and economic inequity in breast cancer survival. For close to a decade, the Task Force has pursued a multifaceted, evidence based approach to combating racial and economic injustice through the lens of breast cancer with programs that include clinical quality measurement and healthcare quality improvement, direct services to women of color and poor women through outreach, education and patient navigation of uninsured, underinsured and publicly insured women and policy analysis, advocacy and vigorous community organizing.
SOURCE NextLevel Health Partners, Inc.
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