Human Services

This report provides welfare dependence indicators through 2019 for most indicators and through 2020 for other indicators, reflecting changes that have taken place since enactment of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) in 1996.

This analysis applies the Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology's Data Quality Framework to assess the data quality of federal data for understanding and responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on five COVID-19 indicators: testing, cases, hospitalizations, deaths, and vaccinations.

Prescriptions dispensed for antipsychotics in nursing homes and assisted living facilities increased since the beginning of the pandemic, with 20.8 thousand dispensed in 2020 compared to 20.5 thousand in 2019. This represents a 1.5% increase in total prescriptions since the beginning of the pandemic despite lower resident census levels in long-term care facilities (LTCFs).

We document a number of key facts related to trends in COVID-19 vaccination intentions of unvaccinated adults in the United States from April 2021 to January 2022 using the Household Pulse Survey. First, among unvaccinated adults both those who were willing to vaccinate and those who were previously unwilling to vaccinate eventually vaccinated in large numbers.

Long-standing health inequities and poor health outcomes remain a pressing policy challenge in the U.S. While opportunities to advance health equity through clinical care continue to be important, addressing the ways in which social determinants of health (SDOH) increase or decrease the risk of poor health outcomes is critical to improving the nation’s health and wellbeing.

This brief summarizes discussions among experts participating in a roundtable. The discussions focused on promising strategies to identify substance use disorder (SUD) among human services participants and refer them to treatment and recovery supports. The roundtable concentrated on four programs: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, child welfare, domestic violence, and Head Start.

This ASPE issue brief examines demographic characteristics of adults receiving booster doses of COVID-19 vaccines using data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Household Pulse Survey. As of March 9, 2022, 47.5 percent of the fully vaccinated adult population has received a booster.

Program Integrity and Effectiveness through Data and Analysis (PIEDA) aims to enhance the capacity to share and link data between state child welfare and Medicaid agencies on issues at the nexus of the two systems. PIEDA intends to sustainably improve the data infrastructure of states to increase their ability to analyze challenges experienced by families involved in child welfare systems.

The rapid emergence of the novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic spurred national concerns about the social determinants of health (SDOH) as risk factors for infection and their potential to negatively impact health outcomes.

Many human services programs recognize the power of “social capital,” or the value that arises from relationships. This report offers insight into how programs use peer supports to help build social capital with participants who are reentering the community after incarceration or are survivors of intimate partner violence or sex trafficking.