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payer and health plan executives and more than
100 speakers to Chicago April.
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industry's top leaders and former president George w
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visit beckershospitalreview.com
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upper right. We're looking forward to hosting you
here in Chicago.
Hi, everyone. This is Elizabeth Cassello with the
Becker's Payer Issues podcast.
I'm excited to be joined today by doctor
Kara Odom Walker, who recently became chief medical
officer for Aetna Medicaid. And we're gonna chat
about the insurer's collaboration with the National Association
of Community Health Centers. So doctor Walker, thank
you so much for joining us today. Thanks
for having me.
So before we jump in, I would love
to hear a bit more about you and
your health care career and your new role
at Aetna.
Thank you so much. I'm so excited to
join Aetna as CMO of Medicaid. It's an
opportunity to really blend the intersection
of clinical care and prior experiences I've had
on the provider side and also as a
state, secretary of health and social services and
defining solutions to transform health care at scale.
And Aetna is part of that journey. I'm
really excited about this partnership as well.
Yeah. So let's dive into the bulk of
it.
What prompted this collaboration, which is focused on
hypertension between Aetna and the National Association of
Community Health Centers, and why now?
So I'm so thrilled to share more about
the news of this collaboration.
Now more than ever, we need ways to
reach patients and communities
with the greatest opportunity to improve
disparities and hypertension outcomes.
I'm a family doctor by background. And as
a Aetna leader, I know the facts.
We know that uncontrolled hypertension
is a significant preventable cause of early death
and long term health issues
that can occur among our Medicaid members.
And I used to practice in a community
health center across the country from the East
Coast to the West Coast. It's a place
where we can make a huge impact as
doctors,
as a payer partner.
So working alongside
NAC, the National Association of Community Health Centers,
is a great opportunity for us. Us. We
know that community health centers are actually the
largest primary care system in The United States.
They serve one in seven Americans,
including some of the nation's most complicated patients
in the most underserved
and needed needy communities.
So we get to address together
not only the medical needs, but also the
other social needs that community health centers are
so great at. I remember,
taking care of patients who really needed us
to navigate to diapers and medicine and transportation
and the full range of things that we
know actually make people healthier.
So this is our opportunity. We know over
six million patients
had hypertension in 2024
And achieving better blood pressure control
in about,
two thirds of those patients is a huge
opportunity for us. That is actually
real scale results at scale in settings where
we need more than ever to address these
long term health consequences.
So
because of the success we know that community
health centers have to improve blood pressure control,
we at Aetna saw this opportunity
to collaborate,
to bring our data, and to improve blood
pressure control and deliver these value based outcomes
at scale across communities, urban, rural,
north, south, East, West. And we know that
these partnerships really matter. So
excited that together, we're gonna focus on regions
where the data has showed that we need
to address
the gaps in improving health outcomes. And we're
starting with four states,
Illinois,
Kentucky,
Michigan, and Virginia,
and really excited about, all the opportunities ahead.
So can you elaborate on why those states
and where you plan to expand if you
are planning on expanding?
Absolutely. So we know that these states have
the greatest need. And as part of our
engagement, we've already thought about which populations
have the greatest gaps
to improve those outcomes and also where we
can bring our skills, our data, our relationships
to bring
impact.
This initiative focuses in these four states because
we've seen the gaps are the widest, but
also we have strong partners
that we can work together to bring data,
tools, expertise.
And
once we find what works, we can create
scale around,
spreading what is
possible
and create even larger impact beyond those four
states in the future.
Makes a lot of sense.
So can you elaborate a bit more on
what you're seeing in terms of hypertension in
Aetna's Medicaid community,
and what health and cost outcomes you're hoping
to see through this partnership?
Absolutely. So we're starting with the data. You
know? The data is showing us where to
get started, and we're gonna leverage
our Aetna data and the Medicaid expertise we
have.
We this is just basic. Right? We start
with what works and then do more of
it so we can go beyond care that's
just about prescribing a medicine, but also lean
into all of the other community resources.
As I mentioned, we know there are so
many
people who need help
both with diagnosing
high blood pressure,
but also finding out how to manage it
better. And this is a daily journey. It
can include nutrition. It can include physical activity,
but also the medications and things that happen
in a doctor's office. We're excited that working
together with community health centers,
our collaboration can bring care
to where people live, to things that are
community informed,
and really, bring a whole suite of services
together.
Since community health centers do make up the
largest primary care health system in The United
States where 52,000,000
people are served, this is an opportunity for
scale and impact.
Community health centers bring together primary care, dental
care, behavioral health care, and we know those
factors actually influence blood pressure control. So how
do we work together?
I'm a family physician, and I have personally
taken care of many patients in community health
centers.
I've worked in the West Coast and East
Coast from Delaware to California and seen how
uninsured patients in local primary care settings often
don't know they have high blood pressure. And
I remember one of these patients distinctly.
They came in to see me, doctor Walker.
I just need these papers signed. I'm about
to start a new job. It's a great
opportunity
for me to have higher pay and better
benefits. Can you just check check these boxes?
And he really had no complaints and no
drama,
but he, unfortunately,
had come in in kind of a hurry.
And so we checked his blood pressure
and thought it must have been wrong. Sometimes
that means, as a doc, like, we have
to give them a moment, settle in, maybe
check with a proper size blood pressure cuff.
That happens sometimes.
So in this situation, I thought, we'll just
check it again.
Unfortunately, when we checked it again,
his blood pressure was still sky high, so
high that I was worried about risk of
stroke,
heart damage, and other consequences.
So we,
worked together in that moment, and he hadn't
really seen anyone in health care for years,
felt great, worked full time, and wanted to
think about these certifications.
So this is a situation that's very real.
It happens
all over
community health centers every day.
It's very common. Half of adults in The
US have high blood pressure, and one in
four don't know they have it. So our
work together isn't about technology
or how Aetna pays the bills, but it
is about how do we talk to people,
really think about what they need, and have
these ongoing relationships to improve their health, improve
blood pressure control, but also reduce heart attack,
strokes, and other consequences.
What early insights are you seeing? I know,
again, it is early on with this program.
And how are you reaching the Medicaid population
given challenges that may be specific,
to those populations?
Thanks, Liz. We're just getting started. So I
don't have a lot of details to show
about the early opportunities,
but I would say we have a
starting place that comes to a common understanding
around how important it is to focus on
this issue
and that there are barriers to care, barriers
around access, getting appointments,
social issues,
thinking about food insecurity.
You know, I, again, remember patients who said,
well, I've been really taking that blood pressure
pill, doctor Walker,
but, you know, I can't figure out how
to get my blood pressure to get lower.
And we did a a review of what
they were eating every day, trying to make
sure they had healthy options,
realizing the cans of vegetables had a lot
of sodium.
And that was what we needed to unlock
blood pressure control at a better level. And
so these are the barriers we're going to
find. Community health centers bring that community lens,
that community voice, and they're deeply embedded to
figure out how to make sure we're talking
in the ways that resonate with patients, that
they feel like they actually can put their
health
into their own hands. This collaboration is exciting,
and we're looking forward to sharing results in
the future.
That's a really interesting insight about the food.
And pivoting away from hypertension,
what other conditions
is the Aetna Medicaid team thinking about collaborating
on going forward?
So we're focused on high blood pressure. High
blood pressure seems
maybe common, easy, and happening
in so many, patients' lives that it should
be easy. I will say
right now, it is our focus.
Aetna Medicaid is committed to the health and
well-being of our members, And so we're thinking
about expanding in other places. But first, thinking
about heart health as a major opportunity
is where high blood pressure fits in. So
think about it. Three in four adults enrolled
in Medicaid have one or more chronic conditions,
not just high blood pressure, but others. So
we're gonna work together around how the whole
care team can come together to design a
plan that's right for them and allow them
to think about the chronic conditions that may
exist. That could be blood pressure, but then
it could build on diabetes,
obesity,
other chronic conditions that are present.
So we're starting with hypertension because it does
lead to other things. And, again, preventing heart
attacks, preventing stroke, preventing other long term outcomes.
It actually improves your
your joint pain as well, and so it
is something that we can focus on. We
know that, in in looking at the total
cost, it also stands out as something that
we can make an impact on. In April
2025, we saw that hypertension related health care
costs totaled
over a $100,000,000.
This is a place where we can start.
I would say once we get that underway
and start to see outcomes that matter in
different communities,
we'd love to start dreaming big. Maybe we
work on maternal health together because we know
that maternal health today is something that we
we can do so much more to make
sure,
future moms have
the right health care access from pregnancy
to birth, and we'll find things that are
working for hypertension, but then can apply to
better prenatal care and taking care of moms
and babies in the future.
This will let us think about how to
partner, how to bring the best evidence,
but also bring our tools around data and
overcoming other barriers. And some of that is
around
access to primary care. But then we can
think about how does nutrition,
transportation,
housing, and stability also play a role in
those rates.
And a little shameless plug to our listeners.
I did just do a podcast on maternal
health initiatives with Medicaid programs. So if you
are more curious about that, we have some
recordings available there.
But, doctor Walker, as we wrap up, I
would love to hear any final final takeaways
you have for other Medicaid leaders and also
broader insurance leaders, and also any thoughts as
you're settling into your role at Aetna.
Well, I'm so excited to be part of
a team that has
commitments to work with partners
in communities of need. And we know that
controlling blood pressure is one of the places
where we can create the highest level of
return on health and outcomes,
particularly for patients on Medicaid.
Right now, we are just thrilled to lean
in with this partnership with NAC to improve
health and health impact.
Community health centers and primary care providers are
the backbone of how we provide care across
the country.
And they've already proven outcomes in hypertension control.
So this is a chance for us at
Aetna to make an impact.
For me personally,
this is a chance for us to think
about scaling and broadening that through partnership,
addressing the social drivers of health, and improving
not only quality, but also equity and total
cost of care.
I'm excited about the collaboration because we know
we are open to future collaborations
no matter what sector to make everyone healthier.
Doctor Walker, thank you so much for taking
the time and joining us today. Thank you,
Liz. Great to see you. Yeah. Great to
see you as well. And to our listeners,
if you'd like to listen to more Becker's
Healthcare podcasts, you can visit beckershospitalreview.com.
Thank you.