The Latest Research, Commentary, And News From Health Affairs
Monday, November 22, 2021
Dear John,
Health Affairs is publishing a theme issue on Disability and Health in October 2022; view our request for abstracts.
Health Equity: COVID-19, Medicare & Medicaid
An upcoming issue of Health Affairs will focus on Disability and Health, an intersection at the heart of health equity. Several papers in the November 2021 issue also focus on health equity topics.
Elizabeth Tung and coauthors quantified associations of neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage in Chicago, Illinois, with racial disparities in COVID-19 positivity during the pandemic’s first wave. They found that those living in a Black majority neighborhood had higher adjusted odds of COVID-19 positivity relative to those in White majority neighborhoods.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Two-Midnight rule states that Medicare inpatient payment is appropriate only if a hospital stay is expected to last through at least two midnights. Sabrina Poon and colleagues analyzed the impact of the rule and concluded that the shift from inpatient to observation stays is directly associated with the adoption of the rule. Poon discussed this research on a recent episode of A Health Podyssey.
Examining survey data in the context of variation in state policies, Brandy Lipton and coauthors determined that adult Medicaid dental coverage, an optional Medicaid benefit, is associated with a 5 percentage point reduction in the prevalence of untreated caries among children in low-income families after Medicaid-enrolled adults had access to dental coverage for at least one year.
Matthew Crane and coauthors broke down
social vulnerability and vaccine hesitancy in data recently made available by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that describe county-level trends in COVID-19 vaccination. After adjusting for vaccine hesitancy, the COVID-19 vaccination rate was lowest in counties classified as high on the Social Vulnerability Index.
Today on Health Affairs Blog, Vineeta Gupta argues that sustained advocacy will be necessary to ensure that the World Bank allocates sufficient funding to nutrition and early childhood development.
Erin Brantley and coauthors discuss how the House-passed Build Back Better Act would direct tens
of billions of dollars to strengthen core public health initiatives and the health workforce.
Elevating Voices: Native American Heritage Month: Thomas Sequist and coauthors wrote in a 2011 article about the Indian Health Service
(IHS), "The IHS has made important progress toward closing the gap in health outcomes between American Indian and Alaska Native people and the overall US population through the use of innovative strategies."
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