Sunday, May 8, 2022 | The Latest Research, Commentary, And News From Health Affairs
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Health Affairs is hiring full-time, paid summer interns to join the digital and equity teams. Applications are due May 12.
Pandemic-Era Nutrition Assistance
For a new Health Policy Brief released earlier this week, Caitlin Caspi and coauthors examine the impacts and sustainability of pandemic-era nutrition assistance programs and policies.
The COVID-19 pandemic spurred a far-reaching federal policy response that likely mitigated an increase in food insecurity in the aggregate US population, the authors write.
The brief describes efforts like the Families First Coronavirus Response Act of 2020 and other legislation which allowed the USDA to expand program eligibility and develop new programs offering novel experiments in nutritional assistance without compromising safe social distancing.
However, despite these programs, alarming disparities in food insecurity emerged early in the pandemic and have persisted, with higher rates among Black and Latinx households compared with White and Asian households.
Many of the federal policies passed in response are ending, even though COVID-19 continues to spread throughout the population and the economic recovery is uneven.
“A longer-term extension of many COVID-19 policy supports until the next Farm Bill
is adopted would offer stability until discussions can occur around which changes should be made permanent,” Caspi and coauthors advocate.
In addition, as policy makers also consider the next Child Nutrition Reauthorization, the authors suggest restoring and building on the 2010 federal nutrition standards and working to explore schools’ expanded role in providing high-quality food year-round to students and families.
Last week, we announced that Shekinah A. Fashaw-Walters, an author in the February issue of Health Affairs, had received the John Heinz Dissertation Award for her dissertation "Inequities in Home Health Access, Outcomes, and the Impact of Public Reporting."
We inaccurately stated that the award was from the National Academy of Science. The award is conferred by the National Academy of Social Insurance.
Earlier this week, Politico published a leaked draft opinion from the Supreme Court that would overturn Roe v. Wade.
In response, Julia Strasser and coauthors write that the elimination of the federal constitutional right to abortion could have immeasurable negative effects on women
and families, including the loss of access to treatment associated with pregnancy loss.
In an episode of This Week,Health Affairs' Senior Editors Jessica
Bylander and Chris Fleming expand upon the conversation surrounding abortion and discuss the health care implications if Roe v. Wade were to be overturned.
The Earth Disease
The final two episodes of the Earth Disease were released this week. In them, journalist Jared Downing discusses how social determinants of health programs intersect with climate and health policy.
He then goes on to explore incentives that the federal government can use to curb climate change, speaking with Arsenio Mataka from the Office of Climate Change and Health Equity at the Department of Health and Human Services.
These episodes mark the end of the 2021 Health
Affairs podcast fellowship. We'd like to thank all of fellows who have participated in the program, including Sania Ali and Avni Kulkarni, producers of While We Wait, and Lalita Abhyankar, producer of Piecemeal.
Using data from four states, Avital B. Ludomirsky and coauthors found that, of primary care physicians who contracted with Medicaid, on average just 25 percent provided 86 percent of care, and 25 percent of specialists provided 75 percent of care.
Please join us on May 17 for a detailed discussion of the paper’s data, methods, and conclusions. Health Affairs Senior Editor Leslie Erdelack will host.
Brian Powers on How Humana Understands Medicare
Advantage Enrollees' Social Needs Listen to Health Affairs Editor-in-Chief Alan Weil interview Humana's Brian Powers on understanding the unmet social needs of Medicare Advantage enrollees.
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