The first step is making sure the President's budget gets the support it needs from leaders in Congress. His budget makes a huge down-payment on reforming healthcare this year, and toward erasing the disparities that have resulted in unequal care. We need to show our strong and unequivocal support for the Presidents budget. Already, Obama has done more to reform health care than George Bush did in eight years including:

· Covering More Children: Reauthorization of the Children's Health Insurance Program to cover an additional 4 million children

· Preventing Cuts in Medicaid: $87 Billion to prevent Medicaid cuts

· Real Money for Disease Prevention in Underserved Communities: $1 billion for prevention & wellness--much of which will be focused on underserved communities & advocates need to weigh in with HHS to shape this spending

· Research Into Which Treatments Work Best for Minority Communities: $1.1 billion for comparative effectiveness--research into what treatments & procedures work best for which patient groups--this research will be conducted with sensitivity to gender, ethnicity, and minority populations.

· Technology To Collect Health Data For Communities of Color: $20 billion in Health Information Technology investments--Health Information Technoloy should enable the improved collection of patient demographic data to better measure patient outcomes by subpopulations

· Investing in the Healthcare Workforce for Communities of Color: $500 million for health care workforce--much of this investment will go to promote National Health Service Corps, whose physicians, dentists, and nurses serve underserved communities

Obama's proposed budget will go even further to promote equality by:

· Investing $640 Billion In Expanded Coverage To Improve The Delivery System and Contain Costs. It's the first step in vastly reducing the number of uninsured and leveling the health care playing field.

· A New Nurse Home Visitation Program That Targets Families At Risk for Chronic Disease With Early Intervention Programs for New Moms.

· Additional $330 Million in Health Care Workforce - Something Communities Of Color Need, So That We Have The Workforce and Delivery System To Level The Playing Field.

Click here to join the Healthcare Equality Project and show your support for President Obama's budget.