Reports

Drug shortages are a persistent public health problem in the United States and in other countries. Shortages can have important implications for the health care systems and pharmacies that purchase, store, and dispense drugs and for the patients who rely on the availability of drugs to treat and prevent disease.

This report describes the current state of Patient-Centered Outcomes Research (PCOR) data infrastructure resources related to Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (ID/DD), highlights data issues in the ID/DD research landscape that require more research, and identifies opportunities to enhance data infrastructure to improve PCOR for ID/DD. Related Products:

Human services programs can implement recruitment and retention strategies to increase father engagement and participation in services to promote child and family well-being. When included in programming, fathers have the opportunity to expand their valuable role in their families and help generate positive child and family outcomes.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many human services organizations, including fatherhood programs, adapted their engagement approaches as the needs of the people they serve changed.

Child support payments are associated with increased parent-child engagement, which can lead not only to better academic and social outcomes for children but also to better parent-child and parent-parent relationships. Moreover, child support payments lifted nearly three-quarters of a million families out of poverty in 2017.

This environmental scan presents a review and synthesis of approaches and strategies adopted by drug checking programs and existing evidence on their effectiveness in changing drug use attitudes, behavior, and health outcomes. It includes studies of drug checking programs across a variety of settings in the United States and internationally.

The purpose of this study is to identify associations between COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations, and deaths among Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) beneficiaries and the proportion of the population fully vaccinated at the county-level between January and May 2021.

This report extends the brief discussion of addressing international effects contained in the Department of Health and Human Service Guidelines for Regulatory Impact Analysis (2016). The purpose of this supplement is to expand that discussion and provide more detailed information on conducting such assessments. Related Products:

This Issue Brief reviews evidence on factors affecting enrollment in health coverage among uninsured populations, including take-up of Medicaid and subsidized Marketplace plans among eligible individuals.

As of September 13, 2021, three vaccines to prevent infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, are available in the United States. The Pfizer vaccine was granted full approval for use in individuals over the age of 16 by the U.S.

The objective of this report is to assess the current landscape of federal and federally funded health care data relevant to PCOR and economic analysis to identify gaps for data stewards, researchers, and future collection efforts.

COVID-19 pandemic’s social restrictions have prompted a surge in the mental health needs of children of all ages. Nationwide 4.3 million children/adolescents have been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of August 2021, and many of them have returned to early childhood and school settings. Schools and early childhood programs have long been essential settings for delivery of mental health services.

In an effort to help build the evidence base around the social determinants of health (SDOH), the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) engaged RAND in a project to evaluate the current evidence from programs and policies targeting SDOH and identify the SDOH research questions, data sources, and data gaps that might be used to develop an SDOH research agenda.

This brief provides a high level overview of the impact of COVID-19 on the development, emotional and behavioral health, social, and economic well-being of children and youth (ages birth to 24).Related Products:

The COVID-19 crisis has disparately harmed low-income households. Across the United States, systemic inequalities in employment, wage-earning, health, and well-being have been strained for sub-populations facing poverty or near-poverty conditions.

COVID-19 has impacted antimicrobial drug prescribing both directly, through COVID-19 treatment, and indirectly, through the reduced spread of illnesses for which antimicrobial drugs are commonly prescribed.

This infographic visualizes a framework for father engagement in human services, detailing key approaches and strategies used by programs, organizations, and systems.  Related Products:

This infographic defines "father engagement" and highlights ways programs, organizations, and systems play a role in promoting father engagement in services.  Related Products:

Fathers want to and can play an important role in their children’s lives, but too often human services programs have not focused on supporting dads. This brief identifies approaches and strategies at the program, organization, and system levels to strengthen engagement of fathers by human services programs. 

This brief discusses the perspectives of a group of working parents on receipt of federal benefits. Based on focus groups, it examines program design and implementation, participation barriers, and factors that could help working parents more readily reach financial independence. Highlights are:

In focus group discussions with 44 working parents receiving assistance from one or more federal programs, many parents shared the view that increasing earnings involves a number of risks. Participants described the sequence of possible risk events as follows:

The Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA) permits states to use title IV-E foster care funding for children placed in foster care with their parent in a licensed residential family-based treatment facility for substance abuse. However, few states currently use this funding, due to barriers such as competing priorities and lack of facilities.

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Air ambulances are used to transport patients in critical situations from the scene of an injury or accident to hospitals, or between hospitals.

In accordance with Section 7062(a) of the SUPPORT Act, in 2019 HHS published the first Status Report on Protecting Our Infants Act Implementation Plan, which included activities through August 2018 on the identification, prevention and treatment of Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS) and opioid use disorder in pregnant women.

President Biden’s Executive Order 14036, “Promoting Competition in the American Economy” (the Competition Executive Order), identifies a lack of competition as a key driver for problems across economic sectors.

Virtual human services delivery has the potential to improve long-standing disparities in service access and outcomes. This brief highlights emerging lessons from the field, identifying considerations for programs to advance equity across all elements of service delivery. Related Products

The COVID-19 pandemic and policy responses, including stay-at-home orders and expanded use of telework, disrupted data collection for major HHS data systems. This brief identifies the impact of the pandemic on 29 HHS statistical surveys and administrative data systems widely used by policymakers and the public.

This infographic illustrates the intersection of environmental justice with human services policies and programs. It presents key facts about how participants in human services programs are particularly affected by environmental injustice, and the ways in which these programs can help mitigate the effects of environmental issues, including climate change.

This tool was developed to assist states and local communities in braiding, blending, or layering multiple federal funding streams (for example, Head Start and the Child Care and Development Fund) to increase the supply of quality early care and education and increase access to comprehensive early childhood and family support services within a coordinated, comprehensive early childhood system a

This report develops an approach for valuing COVID-19 mortality and morbidity risk reductions based on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Guidelines for Regulatory Impact Analysis. Valuing risk reductions associated with regulations or other policies that address the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) presents major challenges.

Between 2011 and 2018, increasing numbers of infants were removed from their parents or caregivers. From 2011 to 2018 the number of infants entering foster care increased 24 percent reaching around 50,000 in 2018. This increase was nearly 13 times as much as the 1.8 percent increase in placements for other age groups .

Over the past 20 years, Medicare and many private payers have transitioned to policies known collectively as value based purchasing (VBP). The COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on health, health care, the economy, and our daily lives over the past 15 months.

This factsheet provides descriptive information on child care eligibility and receipt. Of the 12.8 million children eligible for child care subsidies under federal rules, 15 percent received subsidies. Of the 8.4 million children eligible for child care subsidies under state rules, 23 percent received subsidies. Poorer children were more likely to receive subsidies than less poor children.

As of August 4, 2021, 70.1 percent of U.S. adults have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. However, vaccine coverage varies dramatically across the country, with vaccine coverage being less than 40 percent in a third of U.S. counties. Despite a sufficient supply of COVID-19 vaccines, daily vaccinations have dwindled in recent months.

For working-age adults with disabilities, consistent access to health insurance may be critical to continuity of care and good health outcomes. We tracked changes in health insurance coverage for this population from 2010-2018.

This report focuses on research networks that engage in or support research on patient-centered outcomes. The report was produced as part of the strategic planning process for the Office of the Secretary Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Trust Fund portfolio. Related Products

This Issue Brief describes changes in the uninsured rate, health coverage, and access to care for American Indians and Alaska Natives (AI/ANs) and discusses key policies for this population, including how the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARP) builds on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and invests additional resources in the Indian health care system.

States have embraced Medicaid telehealth flexibilities during the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE), enhancing beneficiary access to services delivered via telehealth. This Issue Brief examines state Medicaid telehealth coverage and policies before and after the COVID-19 PHE was declared in January 2020.Related Products

This report provides welfare dependence indicators through 2018 for most indicators and through 2019 for other indicators, reflecting changes that have taken place since enactment of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) in 1996.

Medicaid and the Marketplace are important sources of affordable, comprehensive healthcare coverage for millions of Americans living in rural areas, and the American Rescue Plan bolsters rural coverage options. But challenges in accessing care remain in many rural areas, including provider shortages, infrastructure limitations, and long distances to care.

The goal of this solicitation is to improve the effectiveness of public policies that reduce poverty, inequality, and their consequences, promote economic mobility and equity, and further develop knowledge of the structural causes of poverty, inequality, and economic insecurity.

The American Rescue Plan (ARP) offers enhanced health insurance premium tax credits and cost-sharing reductions for people receiving unemployment compensation (UC) benefits in 2021. The enhanced subsidies are accessible on HealthCare.gov as of July 1, 2021.

This Issue Brief analyzes national survey data to discuss demographic characteristics of the LGB+ community, recent trends in insurance coverage for this population, and various challenges and barriers to care faced by the broader LGBTQ+ community.Related Products

The HHS Guidelines for Regulatory Impact Analysis (2016) discuss an approach to valuing mortality risk reductions, commonly referred to as the value per statistical life (VSL). This appendix provides background information on the VSL estimates, describes the process for updating these values, reports the estimates in 2020 dollars, and illustrates their application.

Medicare FFS beneficiary service use and associated payments to providers dropped substantially from mid-March through mid-April, but had returned to near-2019 levels by the fall of 2020. The rebound in the fall was not sufficient to offset the earlier declines in the spring, and cumulative payment levels across all states were lower in 2020 compared to 2019.

To support state and local communication and outreach efforts, ASPE developed state, county, and sub-state level predictions of hesitancy rates using the most recently available federal survey data, the Household Pulse Survey from May 26-June 7, 2021. This page includes an interactive map, a pdf file with a methodological description, and datasets for download.

To support state and local communication and outreach efforts, ASPE developed state, county, and sub-state level predictions of hesitancy rates using the most recently available federal survey data, the Household Pulse Survey from May 25-June 7, 2021. This page includes an interactive map and datasets for download.

This Issue Brief presents current estimates of enrollment in health insurance coverage obtained through the ACA Marketplaces and the Medicaid expansion and the subsequent reductions in state-level uninsured rates since the ACA was implemented in 2014.Related Products