‘Hola’ to Health Care Initiatives Reach Out to Hispanic Population
By Roberto Ponce
The Hispanic market is thriving in the U.S., and Indiana is no exception. In four decades, one out of four people in the U.S. will be a Hispanic American. Consequentially, Latinos must be part of health care initiatives from medical innovation to preventive medicine and access to services. Some Hoosier companies have taken a proactive role in serving this rapidly growing community.
Closing the ‘Gap’
This has no relationship at all to the clothing retailer, but rather a reality that must be addressed when reaching out to Latinos. According to Dr. Alfonso Alanis, chief executive officer of Anaclim LLC, and former chief medical officer of Eli Lilly and Company, “there is an enormous gap of knowledge when it comes to the advances of life sciences and the importance of preventive medicine.”
Eli Lilly has made strides to reduce this information gap. Dr. William Chin, vice president of discovery, research and clinical investigation for the company, explains that Lilly has taken an active role in awareness and education. Lilly partnered with the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) to publish a pocket-sized booklet called “Buena Salud Buena Vida – Su Guía de Recursos de Salud,” (Good Health Good Life – Your Guide to Health Resources). The booklet provides tips to Latinos to help them live a healthy life by preventing chronic diseases.
“Eli Lilly and Company wants to help people live longer and healthier lives by creating medicines and providing the appropriate information, not only in how to use those medicines, but also to educate them to live a healthy lifestyle,” Chin offers. Both Alanis and Chin agree that disease prevention is easier than its treatment.
Efforts are being made to improve access to preventive medicine. Dr. Alfredo Lopez founded Alivio Medical Center in 2002. Although most of the patients are Hispanic, the clinic serves people from all backgrounds. “I think what sets our clinic apart is that we serve our patients in a culturally relevant manner,” Lopez says. His clinic has also launched an internal prepayment program, Alivio VIP, with a 7% usage among active patients and providing discounts to patients without insurance.
Wishard Health Services has also taken a leadership role in Indiana by serving Hispanics and other minorities. Dr. Gloria Berlanga King is director of multicultural affairs, which is the umbrella of Hispanic Health Resources, at Wishard. “There is a real cultural barrier when it comes to navigating the system,” King comments. “There is a definite lack of understanding of how the process works.”
Wishard has a team of culturally sensitive people who are fluent in English and Spanish to help guide patients through the process. King states that although they are seeing a growing number of Hispanic patients, they anticipate that services to other ethnicities will also increase over time.
Remaining challenges
Awareness and preventative medicine are only part of the challenge to improve minority health care. According to Alanis, minorities are poorly represented at clinical trials. “Eighty to 90% of FDA approved clinical studies proceed from non-Hispanic whites,” he reports. “There is no balance in minority representation.”
His company, Anaclim LLC, works to make sure that clinical trials have the appropriate ethnic distribution. “We do clinical research by studying the disease’s epidemiology and its ethnic distribution. Then we recruit a population of patients that is representative of the disease, so when the product is approved the obtained observation data is applicable to the overall population.”
John Hixon, director of global new product planning at Eli Lilly, explains that the goal is to make sure that research scientists are listening to what patients, caregivers, physicians and payer systems are saying. Lilly and other companies are trying to determine what these customer needs are in the early stages of research and development.
“Here is where Dr. Alanis’ company comes into play,” Hixon relates. “We need to ensure that we are appropriately including diverse patient populations in our clinical studies so that the products we develop have the data about the performance of the compound within different types of patients.”
Clearly, the growing Hispanic population is impacting research and health service providers. As the population grows and changes, it is also evident that companies need to evaluate their relevance to the Hispanic and multicultural populations and continually find the funding to better treat and serve Indiana’s diverse landscape.
Author: Roberto Ponce is president of Ponce Publicidad, an Indianapolis-based Hispanic specialized marketing and advertising agency. He can be contacted at (317) 297-7571 or www.poncepublicidad.com
‘Hola’ to Health Care