Check out our new events, podcasts and articles on telemedicine,
pharmaceuticals, and more.
 â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â
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John,
The May issue of Health Affairs covers a range of equity topics
including use of telemedicine, care quality for American Indian/Alaska
Native Medicare Advantage enrollees, and the relationship between
unplanned surgery and community characteristics.
Order Now
Telemedicine
In response to COVID-19, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
significantly expanded Medicare's telemedicine coverage. Sanuja Bose
and coauthors explore the relationship between telemedicine use and the
Area Deprivation Index
,
a composite sociodemographic measure of a neighborhood.
As telemedicine use increased, they find, the highest odds of use were
seen for people living in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Three Perspectives reflect on Bose and colleagues' findings and the
importance of equity as a priority in telehealth. Elaine Khoong notes
that equitable access is challenging in a fee-for-service payment
environment
.
Jen Lau and Janine Knudsen describe the importance of using a
community-based approach
to address disparities in access.
Meena Seshamani adds that telehealth policy evaluation
must examine equity, quality, access, and sustainability.
Read More
Disparities
The Child Tax Credit was temporarily expanded between July and December
2021.
Using survey data, Elizabeth Adams and coauthors determine that
during the expansion, rates of very low food security were cut by more
than half
,
and there were small reductions in children's consumption of added
sugar.
Steven Martino and coauthors assess the quality of care received by
American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) Medicare Advantage enrollees
.
They fared better than their White counterparts on some measures and
worse on others, with the differences occurring within the same health
plans.
The authors identify "the need to address large inequities in the
treatment of alcohol or other drug dependence, COPD, and diabetes-all
conditions that AI/AN people suffer from at higher rates than the
overall US population."
Yuqi Zhang and coauthors analyze rates of unplanned surgery among
Medicare beneficiaries
that preferably should be planned when there is adequate access to care.
Beneficiaries who live in communities with a higher Social Vulnerability
Index are more likely to undergo unplanned surgery for certain
access-sensitive conditions and more likely to experience worse outcomes
than their less-vulnerable counterparts.
Read More
Pharmaceuticals
Despite major health policy changes, Brendan Saloner and coauthors
observe few changes in substance use disorder (SUD) treatment
use between 2010 and 2019.
Ultimately, they conclude, "increasing health insurance coverage may
be insufficient, on its own, to boost SUD treatment use."
C. Joseph Ross Daval and coauthors examine the 482 new drugs and
biologics approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) between
2010 and 2021, with a particular focus on the ten drugs approved despite
a negative advisory committee vote.
They find that "the number of new approved drugs receiving advisory
committee review decreased from 59 percent in 2011 to only 6 percent in
2021
,"
and note inconsistencies in the wording of FDA questions posed to the
advisory committees.
Johanna Catherine Maclean and coauthors find that substantiated infant
maltreatment reports with the mother as the perpetrator increased by
38.4 percent after punitive prenatal substance use policies
-those
that criminalize prenatal substance use or consider it to be child
maltreatment-were adopted by states in 2004-18.
Read More
Age-Friendly Health
Christine Ritchie and Bruce Leff describe what a care delivery system
for elders focused on the home and community
would look like, and they present evidence to support its importance.
They define the principles that should guide its development and discuss
what it would take to create it, noting that the current facility-based
system, "although convenient for clinicians, [has] turned out to be
suboptimal for many patients."
Rachael Bedard and coauthors provide a first-of-its-kind overview of the
health of older adults incarcerated in New York City's jail system
.
Referencing the premature aging of people who are incarcerated, the term
"geriatric" is applied to people age fifty-five or older.
This group, which accounted for 8.5 percent of all detainees in 2019, is
more than three times as likely as younger detainees to have a major
medical or mental health diagnosis.
In an Entry Point article, Jonathan Bor describes the public health
crisis of an aging prison population
.
Among assisted living residents enrolled in fee-for-service Medicare who
died in 2018-19, Helena Temkin-Greener and coauthors report that dual
Medicare-Medicaid enrollees were significantly less likely to die at
home
and more likely to die in hospitals or nursing homes compared with
non-
dual enrollees.
Further, "Black residents, regardless of dual enrollment status, were
significantly less likely than White residents to have been enrolled in
hospice at death."
Order The Issue
Subscribe today to Health Affairs to access our current and past issues
.
Attend These Events
Join Health Affairs for free virtual events
this month!
To go along with the new issue of the journal, we produce a variety of
events that expand on the research and bring health policy professionals
up to speed on the latest in health policy.
On May 4, you are invited to attend a Professional Development event
about careers in health policy
with
Katherine Baicker, a leading scholar in the economic analysis of health
policy.
On May 17, Avital B. Ludomirsky will join the Journal Club event titled
"In Medicaid Managed Care Networks, Care Is Highly Concentrated Among A
Small Percentage Of Physicians
."
On May 23, Nakela Cook, executive director of the Patient-Centered
Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), will be featured at the Policy
Spotlight event.
On May 31, join Rachael R. Hardeman for a Professional Development event
about improving the measurement of structural racism
to
achieve antiracist health policy.
View Full Event Schedule
Listen to These Podcasts
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The Earth Disease, the third series from Health Affairs Pathways
, debuted
last week. In this series, Jared Downing explores the intersection of
climate change and health policy.
Listen
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Each week, Health Affairs Editor-in-Chief Alan Weil brings you in-depth
conversations with leading researchers and influencers shaping the big
ideas in health policy and the health care industry.
A Health Podyssey goes beyond the pages of Health Affairs to tell
stories behind the research and share policy implications.
This month, upcoming guests will include Vilsa Curto, Caitlin Hicks, and
more authors from the May issue of Health Affairs.
On a recent episode, Stacie Dusetzina chats with Health Affairs
Editor-in-Chief Alan Weil about the complex world of drug pricing.
Listen
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About Health Affairs
Health Affairs is the leading peer-reviewed journal
at the intersection of health,
health care, and policy. Published monthly by Project HOPE, the journal
is available in print and online. Late-breaking content is also found
through healthaffairs.org , Health Affairs Today
, and Health Affairs Sunday
Update . Â
Project HOPE is a global health and
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health care workers to save lives across the globe. Project HOPE has
published Health Affairs since 1981.
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