The Connection
A roundup of recent Fund publications, charts, multimedia, and other timely content.
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January 21, 2025
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How We Measure Mental Health Matters
It’s time to overhaul how we measure recovery for people with serious mental illness to better reflect their needs, say experts from Fountain House, the national mental health nonprofit. On To the Point, Joshua Seidman and colleagues describe a new project that aims to identify the most important measures based on input from people living with serious mental illness, and then determine how to integrate those measures into provider payment and reimbursement programs. The authors call for measures focused on “meaningful outcomes: lives improved, acute events avoided, and successful recovery and rehabilitation.”
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Envisioning Better Health Care for a New Year
In 2025, the Commonwealth Fund will continue to turn to strong evidence, to proven models, and to health care system leaders, providers, and patients to help change course and find solutions, says President Joseph R. Betancourt, M.D., in his new video and post for To the Point. He discusses three themes that rose to the surface in 2024: frustration, and sometimes outrage, at business practices that prioritize profits over patient care; the prohibitive cost of health care; and wide disparities in health outcomes, access to care, quality, and equity. Betancourt says the Commonwealth Fund remains committed to bringing about an equitable health system that works for everyone.
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FEATURED CHART
High U.S. Overdose Deaths Demand Bold Solutions
The United States has the highest rate of overdose deaths in the world, according to a new analysis by the Commonwealth Fund’s Evan Gumas. The latest mortality data, from 2022, show the U.S. with 324 deaths per 1 million people. While other nations with high rates, like Scotland and Canada, saw decreases between 2021 and 2022, the U.S. rate has remained elevated. Gumas says the U.S. should pursue national harm-reduction policies, as 109 other countries have done, and carefully monitor drug use nationally to focus efforts on timely and appropriate care.
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QUIZ
By how much did Portugal reduce overdose deaths between 2001 and 2021?
- 10%
- 30%
- 50%
- 80%
Scroll down to see if you got it right.
Shielding Seniors from Misleading Medicare Guidance
Medicare beneficiaries are faced with many choices when selecting coverage. For assistance, many seniors turn to insurance agents or brokers, who receive commissions for enrolling beneficiaries. But with differences in compensation based on the plan or type of coverage, many agents prioritize their own financial interests over beneficiaries’ needs. On To the Point, experts from the Center for Medicare Advocacy discuss a proposed rule intended to disallow tactics that financially incentivize agents and brokers to steer beneficiaries into certain plans.
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Addressing Social Risks to Improve Health
Brazil’s Bolsa Familia Program, a poverty alleviation initiative, has had a dramatic impact on the incidence of tuberculosis ([link removed] ) and deaths from the disease. According to a study in Nature Medicine, making cash transfers to people living in extreme poverty more than halved the number of tuberculosis cases and the death rate. Transforming Care described the strategies that Minnesota and Massachusetts have used to encourage health care providers to identify and address social risks ([link removed] ) that have a direct bearing on health outcomes, including food and housing insecurity.
QUIZ: Answer
The answer is D. In 20 years, Portugal reduced its drug overdose deaths by 80 percent.
Confronting a substance use epidemic, the government of Portugal implemented a series of groundbreaking policy changes, including the eventual decriminalization of drug possession in 2001. These reforms were integral to slashing the country’s overdose rates by 80 percent ([link removed] ) and its infectious disease transmission rates by half over two decades. In the U.S., more than 100,000 Americans died of a drug overdose in 2022 for the third consecutive year. In the latest International Insight, the Commonwealth Fund’s Evan Gumas discusses what U.S. policymakers can learn from a country that now consistently ranks among the nations with the fewest overdose deaths.
Affordable, quality health care. For everyone.
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