Opportunity Agenda in the News

Two op-eds by the Opportunity Agenda are making their way around the net.

Over at Tom Paine, Opportunity Agenda co-founders Alan Jenkins and Brian Smedley have an article assessing the state of health care equity five years after the release of the ground breaking study, Unequal Treatment:

Five years ago last month, the Institute of Medicine released a congressionally-mandated report, Unequal Treatment,
concluding that minority patients receive a lower quality of health
care than whites—even after taking into account differences in health
insurance and other economic and health factors. Authored by a
blue-ribbon panel assembled by the nation’s foremost health and science
advisory body, the report went on to say that such inequalities in
health care carry a significant human and economic toll and therefore
are “unacceptable.” Yet despite these urgent appeals, little has been
done to address disparities—leaving too many Americans vulnerable to
inequitable and inadequate health care.

In the current issue of The American Prospect, Alan Jenkins contributes to a special report on poverty in America with an article on the role that race plays in poverty in America.

Many Americans of goodwill
who want to reduce poverty believe that race is no longer relevant to
understanding the problem, or to fashioning solutions for it. This view
often reflects compassion as well as pragmatism. But we cannot solve
the problem of poverty -- or, indeed, be the country that we aspire to
be -- unless we honestly unravel the complex and continuing connection
between poverty and race.

Both pieces offer solutions as well as critiques of the problem.  Go give them a read.