Questions & Answers (continued...)
At the end of each Breakout Group presentation, the large group was able to ask questions about each group's report.

Disease Management
The issue was raised to the Disease Management Breakout Group that we need to make sure that business organizations and health plans see the economic value to addressing health disparities, from both a prevention and treatment perspective

It was agreed that we need to make sure that ethnic physician organizations are working with managed care plans and business organizations to help everyone see the cost value of prevention management. When asked how best to do this, it was felt that disseminate of materials and resources to these organizations about the impact of diabetes health disparities along with examples of best practices will be an important first step.

Public Policy
A number of questions were asked of the Public Policy Breakout Group. The first centered on understanding the interplay between policy decisions made by the Network and the CMA. The Network will ultimately decide its own policy direction. Some of these policies may be similar to policy positions taken by the CMA, but no one is recommending that the Network only implement CMA health policy. The large group felt that a legislative committee needs to be created that would create policy, legislation and follow bills in Congress and the State Legislature.

The question was raised about whether the group discussed how to get the information out to the public (i.e. PSA announcements).

We are working with ethnic media on another project and will work at getting the media involved in whatever projects we do, including the work on health disparities and diabetes. It was recommended that we come up with a slogan or name for the media as a marketing tool, perhaps an acronym. One suggested is DEEP - Diabetes Evaluation, Education Prevention & Policy. We also need to have a marketing campaign with a list of all EPOs to let others know who we are and what we are doing.

In the large group discussion, the question was raised about how to create a clearinghouse to house and distribute policy information.

By using a clearinghouse we could have policies and information put up on the NEPO website developed by the Network, and links to other partner organizations that already have policy information.