Aetna, not content to remain just an insurer, is dabbling in providing IT services to physicians, and today also revealed that online voting is underway in the 2012 “Aetna Voices of Health” national campaign, created by the company in 2011 to honor groups that “share its goals of closing racial and ethnic health care quality gaps and helping people live healthier lives,” according to a press release.
The group with the most votes receives $30,000, while the one with the second highest amount of votes gets $20,000.
The groups promote wellness locally by fighting conditions like asthma, diabetes and childhood obesity, which hit people of color at higher rates. In just one example, back in 2008, blacks had their legs amputated far more often than whites, as a complication of diabetes. Sadly, this is partly because of the care they got and partly because of difficulties they may have faced in getting treatment.
In Texas, where 1.7 million or 12 percent of people have diabetes, Aetna recently unveiled two programs to help doctors treat the disease.
You can vote from now until Oct. 14 at www.aetnavoicesofhealth.com for 34 nominated organizations that are working to improve people’s health and well-being, the press release reported. Aetna is promoting the program through social media and online advertising.
“Aetna is very proud again this year to honor local organizations through the ‘Aetna Voices of Health’ campaign,” said Floyd W. Green III, vice president and head of Aetna’s community relations and urban marketing, in a statment. “We were delighted with the response of last year’s campaign, which gave people across the country a chance to help us honor the wonderful work being done to end disparities.”
Last year Latino Health Access, a Santa Ana, Calif.-based organization whose community health workers help thousands of people improve health behaviors each year, won the most votes of the nearly 640,000 people who participated in the campaign.
“Voices of Health” was created as part of its support of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project, to which Aetna donated $1.3 million to support the project, with a portion of its gift used to help plant 180 new cherry trees at the memorial site in Washington, D.C.
Each group gets a special website where their stories will be told. Groups also are reaching out to ask for votes and driving attention and awareness through word-of-mouth.
Edited by
Jamie Epstein
