Human Services

During the COVID-19 public health emergency, states used Appendix K, a standalone appendix available during emergency situations, to modify their existing Medicaid HCBS 1915(c) waiver programs. Using Appendix K, states can make to make temporary changes to access and eligibility, payment, services, and other aspects of their waiver programs.

The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) released an environmental scan report that tells the emerging story of the many successes and challenges in improving COVID-19 testing and vaccination rates, especially among people who are medically or socially at disproportionate risk of COVID-19 or related adverse outcomes.

Despite the increasing evidence of high suicide rates and associated risk factors for older adults in the United States, the number of programs addressing these risk factors remains limited.

Direct care workers (DCWs) such as nursing assistants, home health aides, and personal care assistants play an essential role in the health and well-being of over 20 million Americans. Yet DCW wages are not enough to make jobs competitive with entry level positions in other industries with similar job requirements which exacerbates the challenges in recruitment and retention of these workers.

Emergency departments (EDs) are key partners in filling the gap between people who need opioid use disorder (OUD) treatment and people who ultimately receive it.

This report and dataset inventory identifies individual-level measures for conducting patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) relevant to adults with disabilities, aged 18–64 years.

This project developed a calculator to help people anticipate how a change in earnings from employment would affect their net income, and in so doing, provide public benefit recipients with their estimated effective marginal tax rate on new earnings. Key Points:

This research report updates prior reports on Medicare FFS telehealth trends during the COVID-19 public health emergency with data through end of 2021, by beneficiary characteristics, visit specialty and geography including by state. Medicare telehealth flexibilities during the COVID-19 pandemic continued to encourage use of telehealth among Medicare beneficiaries in 2021.

ASPE contracted with RAND Health Care to catalogue and assess state changes to Medicaid telehealth policies during the COVID-19 PHE through May 2022 and identify the driving circumstances, motivations, and evidence supporting telehealth policy decisions during the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE).

This brief presents considerations for program administrators and other practitioners around increasing the use of primary prevention in human services systems to shift from responding to families after they are in crisis to preventing the crisis before it occurs.