It's been a rocky week for President Obama in general, but particularly concerning his connection to African Americans. After kicking off his re-election campaign with a well-received speech at the Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network conference, the same event culminated with a televised shouting match between Sharpton and Dr. Cornel West over whether the president has credibly acknowledged black hardship or whether he is, according to West, a "black mascot" for wealthy bankers.

Federal budget negotiations managed to ward off a government shutdown, but the compromise ceded steep cuts to education and health programs (although many cuts targeted programs with unspent funds, or that were covered elsewhere) and revoked Washington, D.C.'s right to use its own money to help poor women access abortion services.

And while the Department of Health and Human Services unveiled a plan to reduce racial health disparities, Gallup released a poll showing that President Obama's approval rating among African Americans is down, from above 90 percent to 85 percent.

It's against this backdrop that the White House Office of Public Engagement launched a new webpage dedicated to the administration's policies and outreach that benefit the black community. The site, whitehouse.gov/africanamericans, actually started as a Black History Month project highlighting African-American members of the Obama administration, but it's been retooled as a year-round "What We're Doing" information clearinghouse with blog posts, fact sheets, video and photo galleries.

Features include a video of Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett explaining the administration's efforts to combat domestic HIV/AIDS (and sharing a personal story about losing her sister-in-law to the disease), a document breaking down how Obama's proposed 2012 budget (pdf) promotes job training, lending and college access in black communities, and a blog detailing a recent White House roundtable discussion with 60 black gay and lesbian student leaders. Some may dismiss the site as pandering -- but for a White House communications team that's notoriously wonky and long-winded, it's a way to help them make policy more personal and practical.

"We know that there's a continual need to get information out more," Michael Blake, White House director of African-American outreach, admitted to The Root. "We saw this as a perfect opportunity to gather everything into one central place, so that when someone asks, 'What is happening for the African-American community,' they don't have to go to multiple places. They can go to just one."

The low black voter turnout in November's crushing mid-term election was one big sign that their message wasn't connecting.

"A lot of people are frustrated, and they may not be aware of everything that's happening from this administration that is directly helping people," said Blake. "We're always saying that $1 billion [sent] out to black colleges over a 10-year span, for example, or the money that went to community health centers, is a huge deal."

Since the midterm election, the administration has stepped up its black outreach with an accelerated roster of events -- this week they'll hit the National Minority Supplier Development Council conference, as well as community events and conversations in Atlanta with Mayor Kasim Reed and HBCU students. The new African-American-focused Web portal is another extension of the effort, which has also dispatched representatives to Detroit, San Antonio and the National Urban League conference this year.

"We are literally crisscrossing the country to continue engaging with people on the ground," said Blake, who isn't daunted by constant, sometimes angry charges that the White House isn't doing enough. "I love the challenge of my job because it forces us to not be complacent, and it forces us to be aggressive about making it a two-way conversation."

I recently wrote a piece on what the Affordable Care Act does about racial and ethnic health disparities, a long-standing problem that had never been addressed by federal legislation before the law's passage. The law takes important steps to improve health care access and quality for low-income communities of color, but its efforts to confront unequal neighborhood conditions that drive poor health in the first place (such as environmental pollution and lack of supermarkets) aren’t up to snuff.

What a difference a few days makes. Almost as if on cue, on Friday the Department of Health and Human Services released two strategic plans with the specific goal of reducing health disparities. The HHS Action Plan to Reduce Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities largely focuses on implementing portions of the Affordable Care Act—such as improving data collection on health inequities, establishing cultural competency educations for health workers and expanding community health centers. The National Stakeholder Strategy for Achieving Health Equity, however, targets what’s going on in local communities.

“A lot of health and health care is not just about the doctor,” Garth N. Graham, HHS Deputy Assistant Secretary for Minority Health, told The Root about the Stakeholder Strategy. The plan was created with input from grassroots organizations, local businesses and academic institutions across the country – all which stressed that it does little good to preach about proper diet and exercise without understanding the neighborhood context. “It’s also about how people interact with other components of daily life,” he said.

With that premise in mind, the hefty, 228-page Stakeholder Strategy provides a roadmap for how local communities can partner with local businesses and local government to create community solutions, buoyed by investment from various federal agencies. Whether the challenge involves food deserts, water pollution, mold-infested housing, or lack of parks and other recreational facilities, the document offers ideas to solve them.

“We don’t want to make this seem like eliminating health disparities is entirely a federal effort,” said Graham. “What you need is strong federal commitment and investment; then other things can occur from there on the community level.”

Both the HHS Action Plan and the National Stakeholder Strategy go into effect immediately, using existing department funds for now. Despite a Republican-controlled House of Representatives which is likely to oppose the initiatives in the next fiscal year, HHS remains optimistic about the leadership from various supporters in Congress, such as Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Senator Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.), both of whom spoke at a Washington press conference announcing the plans.

Brian Smedley, vice president for the Health Policy Institute at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, who also spoke at the presser, noted the economic impact associated with health disparities. According to a Joint Center study (pdf), between 2003 and 2006 health care inequities cost Americans $1.24 trillion.

On a local level, however, I wondered if the political will to take this on was really there. It’s not like this is a new problem – low-income community health challenges have persisted since…forever. Graham is considerably more optimistic.

“You can’t assume that because a situation is bad, it will always be bad,” he said. “These ideas came from people at the local level, so this is about giving them a forum. People can now display to their local legislatures, state health departments and other organizations, what a concrete strategy looks like. We’re connecting that with a national effort, so communities know they’re also part of something even bigger.”