Age, Gender & Gender Identities

This brief summarizes focus groups and interviews with individuals who receive support through human services programs and federal benefits. These conversations explored participants’ feelings about well-being, including what it means to them and how the support they received through federal benefits and local human services programs influenced their well-being.

The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has been working with researchers, human services agency leaders, and persons with lived experience to visualize, describe, and document models of prevention within human services.

Efforts to promote positive mental health and prevent the onset of mental health difficulties are crucial for supporting healthy early childhood social-emotional development and well-being.

This brief summarizes an expert convening focused on the child support program’s current ability and future potential to help address child poverty.Key Findings

This Issue Brief examines the impact of Medicaid throughout its six decades and highlights the importance of Medicaid coverage for low-income children and adults. The brief reviews studies showing that access to Medicaid coverage is associated with a significant improvement in health and mortality.

This study represents findings from a descriptive analysis of a linked mother-child Medicaid claims dataset to examine the characteristics of pregnant women who use medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD) or intensive behavioral health treatment; additional analysis describes the mental health and neurodevelopment outcomes of their children at one year and three years.

The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH), in partnership with Mathematica, are conducting a comprehensive study to identify promising practices aimed at reducing disparities in COVID-19 vaccination and testing, and policy options to promote equitable, routine vaccination.

Key Points:

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a broad category of diseases affecting approximately half of American adults. Despite progress in treatment and management, CVD still has a large health, mortality, and economic burden. This report to Congress describes CVD and its adverse health outcomes, as well as certain risk factors and prevention and treatment options.

Nursing homes experienced unprecedented financial challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, raising concerns about a potential increase in nursing home closures.