Reports

In the United States, accessing behavioral health care is a persistent and complex challenge, even among those with insurance coverage. Behavioral health care access challenges stem from a combination of provider shortages, systemic barriers, and logistical hurdles. People frequently encounter difficulties determining the type of provider or level of care that best suits their needs.

This brief presents information on Head Start spending per slot across the country.  Key findings include:

This issue brief examines how Medicare Advantage Special Needs Plans (SNPs) address the care needs of people living with dementia (PLWD) and their caregivers.

In Fiscal Year 2025, OS-PCORTF projects and other OS-PCORTF initiatives collectively enhanced the data infrastructure available for patient-centered and comparative clinical effectiveness research (CER) across national and HHS health objectives.

Unpaid caregivers play a vital role in supporting older adults and people with disabilities to remain in their homes and communities. They often face substantial financial and emotional strain from the burden of caregiving. In response, federal and state policymakers have advanced proposals to offer targeted tax relief to caregivers.

Medicaid provides health insurance coverage and services and supports for people with disabilities, as well as groups of children and adults based on financial eligibility.

This study examined how people with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) use hospice compared with patients who have other terminal diagnoses, as well as how hospice characteristics shape those care patterns.

This brief, focused on the Title IV-E Prevention Program, explores how states, territories, and Tribes have been engaging in the program since it began. The content highlights the Title IV-E Prevention Services Clearinghouse process, as well as information from jurisdictions’ prevention plans and claimed expenditures. Key findings include:

This 2024 vignette provides examples of how a range of OS-PCORTF cross-agency projects are working to improve maternal health by 1)Reducing Preventable Pregnancy-Related Deaths and Improving Maternity Care 2) Studying Substance Use Treatment Outcomes for Pregnant Women 3) Representing all American Mothers and Children in Research Data

This report is to serve as a data source guide that helps policymakers and researchers understand the current data infrastructure landscape for SCD-focused health outcomes research. Specifically, the goals are to identify existing SCD data sources and data dashboards as well as key considerations to enhance data collection and use.

This Issue Brief explores opportunities that technology-enabled care (TEC) offers to help meet patient and provider needs for high-valued coordinated care to improve health outcomes. It explores literature surrounding existing available TEC options, as well as economic and payment issues that influence whether this is taken up.

The Welfare Indicators Act of 1994 (Public Law 103-432) requires the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to prepare an annual report to Congress on indicators and predictors of “welfare dependence.” That Act requires the report to include three programs: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program (which replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) led the Multistate EMS and Medicaid Dataset (MEMD): A Linked Dataset for Patient-Centered Outcomes Research project which received funding in 2021 by the Office of the Secretary of HHS’s Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Trust Fund.

This brief synthesizes experiences over the past 25 years of the Child and Family Services Review (CFSR), providing an overview of the process, analyzing collective state performance across rounds, and highlighting costs and challenges. During that time, zero states have passed the CFSR process. Although the process does not seem to be driving program improvement, it is costly and burdensome.

Improving maternal health in the U.S. requires strengthening care and support during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period. Doula services have shown promise in improving maternal and infant outcomes, yet more research is needed to understand these impacts.

We modeled the excess utilization of three commonly used drugs that treat heat-related illness in emergency departments during extreme heat events, using literature-derived estimates of emergency department visit rates for heat-related illness on extreme heat days and drug utilization rates from medical claims data.We estimate that extreme heat is associated with an average of 34,

Recent disruptions in medical product supply chains have highlighted the need for stronger, more coordinated approaches to ensuring reliable access to medical products.

This study examines the use of medical services and long-term services and supports by the population over age 65 over time.

This issue brief looks at changes in the utilization of personal care services among Medicaid beneficiaries from 2019 to 2020.

Increasing innovation in medical products is a policy priority. A first step to understanding changes in the level of innovation is to determine how to measure the baseline of innovation. Existing research employs a variety of measurement methods–scientific, therapeutic, and economic measures–to study trends in medical product (e.g., drugs, biologics, devices) innovation.

Patient advocacy organizations (PAOs) play a key role in medical product development. Many PAOs raise money to fund medical product development activities – such as basic science research, preclinical research, and clinical trials - for their condition of focus, whereas others fund or develop resources such as biobanks or patient registries to support the research community.

There is ongoing interest in understanding ways to reduce drug prices and improve patient access to prescription drugs in the U.S. The estimated savings to the U.S. healthcare system from the use of biosimilars are significant.

The Fiscal Year (FY) HHS 2026 Evaluation plan includes four (4) evaluations reflecting evidence-building activities in different Operating and Staff Divisions across the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The selected evaluations highlight activities that will generate actionable evidence in FY 2026 on priority topics.

Recent federal policy discussions have renewed focus on psychiatric medication use among children and adolescents. Psychiatric medications represent one evidence-based component within a spectrum of effective treatments for pediatric mental illness, alongside psychotherapy, family-based interventions, and school supports.

Providing compensation to clinical research participants to offset the costs associated with participation is often suggested as a way to improve recruitment and retention. However, relatively little is known about the landscape of compensation in clinical research.

To help patients make informed choices about their care, the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is improving the quality and accessibility of data needed to determine which treatments and care options work best.

Spending on biologics—large, complex molecules made from a living source—has been increasing over time and now represents nearly half of all U.S. prescription drug spending. Biosimilar competition for biologics is limited.

Increasing patient engagement in clinical trials offers opportunities to improve enrollment and retention in clinical trials, helping ensure interventions can be evaluated effectively and that clinical research dollars are used efficiently.

This brief describes how enhancing linked data infrastructure across health and human services programs can improve efficiency, increase transparency through strengthening outcomes research, and empower patients and families to make more informed choices.

The cost of raising a family in America is high and continues to rise, with inflation rising by 23 percent between 2020 and 2025. For working families, some of the largest nondiscretionary expenses continue to be health care and child care.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) analyzes the benefits, costs, and other impacts of significant proposed and final rulemakings, consistent with the requirements of several executive orders and statutes. HHS develops these analyses according to technical guidance published by the U.S.

We conducted a landscape analysis to understand the characteristics, impacts, and costs associated with medical device shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. Among health systems, nursing homes and rural hospitals were the most impacted by medical device shortages due to high demand and supply transportation issues.

Shifting spending and delivery of long-term services and supports (LTSS) from institutions to the home and community is often referred to as rebalancing. This report and brief describe variation in LTSS rebalancing between 2016 and 2019 by enrollee age, health condition, and demographic factors.

The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) released a report examining trends in prevalence of Long COVID among different types of workers and among individuals who were not working. Workers in different occupations face different risks of COVID infection, and, potentially, Long COVID, depending on the nature of their work.

Older adults with behavioral health disorders often experience worse health and functional outcomes, have higher rates of emergency department visits, use more medications, and have higher health care costs than those without a behavioral health disorder. There is need for a greater understanding of the extent to which older adults experience behavioral health disorders.

This report examines national trends in telehealth service delivery to enrollees ages 0-18 years from 2019 to 2021, by enrollee characteristics such as age group and race and ethnicity. Services delivered via telehealth to pediatric Medicaid and CHIP enrollees rapidly expanded with the onset of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE) in 2020 and remained higher than pre-PHE levels in 2021.

This Issue Brief provides a descriptive analysis of postpartum health care use among the Medicaid population before and during the PHE, when the continuous enrollment condition was in effect.

While the likelihood of needing any long-term services and supports (LTSS) is roughly a coin flip, the cost if one needs assistance for a long period of time can be catastrophic. For example, about one-in-five Americans turning age 65 today will have long-term care costs exceeding $200,000.

The 2025-2028 Draft Action Plan for Addressing Shortages of Medical Products and Critical Foods and Strengthening the Resilience of Medical Product and Critical Food Supply Chains (“Draft Action Plan”) presents coordinated and strategic actions that the Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS,” or “Department”) plans to take from 2025 through 2028.

In 2008, Congress passed the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act (MIPPA), in part to help improve access to outpatient mental health services. The legislation reduced Part B co-insurance rates for outpatient mental health services to be the same as the coinsurance rates for physical health rates. MIPPA gradually reduced cost-sharing rates over a 5-year period.

The U.S. has a number of policies related to drug pricing, affordability, and availability. To encourage manufacturers to innovate with new therapies, patent policy rewards the creation of new branded medicines. As those patents come to an end, generic drug manufacturers may enter a market and seek to sell their products at lower prices than the competing brand drugs.

This brief summarizes results of interviews and focus groups with participants in human services programs about how they view extreme weather and other environmental hazards and their effects on families and communities. Participants discussed acute hazards such as flooding, as well as more chronic problems such as widespread trash, heat, poor air and water quality, and lead.

To understand the size and impact of costs to clinical trial participants, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) conducted an exploratory survey of 112 U.S. adults who participated in an oncology clinical trial between 2018-2024.

We evaluated both the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services Innovation Center (CMS Innovation Center) models and the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) and found that they have generated gross savings for all beneficiaries in the Traditional Medicare program while demonstrating positive impacts on selected quality measures.

Biosimilars provide competition for biologics, which account for a significant and growing portion of Medicare Part B drug spending. This report evaluates the current state of biosimilar competition in Medicare Part B and explores opportunities to achieve further savings.

The U.S. supply chain for provider-administered outpatient drugs involves several entities, including drug manufacturers, wholesalers, healthcare providers (e.g., outpatient facilities, hospital pharmacies, doctor’s offices, and standalone clinics), group purchasing organizations (GPOs), payers, and beneficiaries.

The National Guidelines for Behavioral Health Crisis Care from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) call for a sustainable infrastructure to respond to behavioral health crises, through crisis services that are accessible to anyone, anywhere, at any time.

This study, commissioned by ASPE, uses multiple data sources to 1) assess trends in pharmaceutical mergers and acquisitions (M&As) over the 2010-2023 period; 2) evaluate characteristics of drugs involved in M&As, and 3) examine the effects of M&As on the pharmaceutical supply chain.

Interviews were held with key informants from harm reduction organizations or similar programs from across the United States, to better understand how they are responding to the presence of xylazine in their communities. All participants noted an increase in xylazine prevalence in their communities, ranging from a years-long problem to first being identified in early 2023.

This two-pager presents knowledge gaps and research opportunities elevated during a national convening of child support and child poverty experts. The questions under each topic are opportunities where research can support child support program decision-making surrounding current issues elevated during the convening, though they do not cover the only important questions for study.