Studies from 40 years of RAND Health— February 2009
In 1969, the RAND Corporation used $25,000 of its own funds to establish the Health Sciences Program. Today, the Health unit is the largest research division within RAND. Its annual budget of approximately $60 million makes it one of the largest private health research groups in the world.
We marked our 40th anniversary by highlighting key studies that reflect the breadth and scope of our work and have made the greatest contribution to shaping health care policy, advancing research, and improving health around the world.
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What Are the Public Health Implications of Prisoner Reentry in California?
— Dec 1, 2011
California, the state with the nation's largest prison population, is releasing increased numbers of inmates under its 2011 Public Safety Realignment Plan. RAND was asked to study the public health implications of returning prisoners for the communities they return to and has found both challenges and opportunities.
Is the VA Meeting the Mental Health Care Needs of U.S. Veterans?
— Nov 1, 2011
Americans who served in the military receive care for mental health and substance use disorders from the VA hospital system. The VA has made improving mental health care for veterans an institutional priority and asked RAND to evaluate the quality of services for these conditions.
The Rising Costs of Health Care
— Oct 1, 2011
How do soaring health care costs affect the finances of the average American family? A new RAND Health study shows that the doubling of health costs between 1999 and 2009 largely wiped out an average family's real income gains.
Influences on Adolescent Sexual Behavior
— Nov 20, 2008
RAND Health has worked on multiple studies identifying the predictors and consequences of adolescent sexual intercourse. The most recent work, by Dr. Anita Chandra, is the first study to demonstrate a link between exposure to sexual content on television and the experience of a pregnancy before the age of 20.
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has released a free toolkit designed to guide hospitals in using the AHRQ Patient Safety Indicators and Inpatient Quality Indicators to improve hospital performance. A RAND Health team, in partnership with UHC, developed and field-tested the toolkit.
The U.S. Department of Defense sponsors many programs for servicemembers and their families. RAND compiled a searchable online catalog of 211 programs that address psychological health and traumatic brain injury.
Project CHOICE is a weekly confidential after-school program for Los Angeles teenagers to discuss alcohol, cigarette, and drug use, and to get information on teenage substance use, its consequences, and how to avoid it.
The Building Recovery by Improving Goals, Habits, and Thoughts (BRIGHT) project is a collaborative effort to understand how well cognitive behavioral therapy depression treatment works for people with substance use disorder.
Policymakers at the Federal and state levels are facing new
challenges as they implement the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA).
RAND COMPARE is a modeling tool that simulates the impact of implementation
decisions on insurance coverage, premiums, and health care spending.
The results of these simulations can be used by policy makers
to help them understand and anticipate likely choices made by
firms and consumers under a variety of options.
How the Affordable Care Act Will Affect Coverage and Costs in Five States
— Apr 5, 2011
RAND Health, in partnership with The Council of State Governments (CSG), used the RAND COMPARE simulation model to assess the likely effects of the ACA on insurance coverage and state government health-care spending in five states (California, Connecticut, Illinois, Montana, and Texas). The percentage of residents with health care coverage is expected to rise significantly in all five states; health care spending will also increase in four of the five states (all except Connecticut).
The RAND Health project "Helping Families Raise Healthy Children" of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, seeks to improve identification and services for families who have a risk of experiencing caregiver depression and early childhood developmental delays.
This web-based mapping tool from RAND can help health care decisionmakers in Missouri identify community-level hotspots where suboptimal health care exists, in particular when it is related to low health literacy.
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has created important health challenges for the entire region. The RAND Public Health Systems and Preparedness (PHSP) initiative has been doing work on related issues for many years and offers a relevant body of work.
California's dirty air caused more than $193 million in hospital-based medical care from 2005 to 2007 as people sought help for problems such as asthma and pneumonia that are triggered by elevated pollution levels.
The Flu Vaccine Survey from RAND is a project that reviews nationally representative samples of adults to collect data on the receipt of seasonal influenza vaccine in the United States.
The Q-DART project uses innovative approaches to highlight gaps in quality of care and health outcomes in diverse populations in order to help health plans, public health organizations, and others concerned about improving the care that people receive allocate scarce resources more wisely.
Project ALERT
— Aug 1, 2009
Project ALERT helps kids realize that not everyone is "doing drugs."
The Special Needs Populations Mapping tool can help public health agencies develop appropriate strategies for incorporating special needs populations into public health preparedness and response planning.
RAND Health can assess the health care systems and capacities of counties and population centers. As communities become increasingly diverse and the economic climate shifts, policymakers need dependable data and analysis to help understand and plan for the health of residents.
Understanding the relationships between neighborhood characteristics and the cumulative wear and tear on multiple organ systems as a result of life stress.
RAND Global Health supports the development of health systems and good health policy in the global community by analyzing, modeling, and assessing policy options for public and private sector entities in the United States and around the world.
The Invisible Wounds of War Study assessed Iraq veterans' health-related needs associated with PTSD, major depression, and traumatic brain injury, examined the treatment capacity of the current health care system, and estimated the costs of providing quality health care to all military members who need it.
Vulnerable elders receive on average only half of recommended care; for conditions that affect primarily the elderly, they receive appropriate care less than one-third of the time. Interventions based on ACOVE indicators can improve the care physicians provide to older adults.
Improving health and the efficiency of health care service delivery are among today's most vexing public policy problems. With the help of a generous donation from former RAND trustee Peter Bing, RAND created the Bing Center for Health Economics to address these issues with innovative, high-profile research.
Advancing Clinical Decision Support is an intensive, multi-part project seeking address the major barriers that must be dealt with in order to enhance decision making in clinical workflow. A particular focus of this project deals with meaningful use of electronic health record systems.
Children who are exposed to violence can experience negative social and psychological effects both at the time of the exposure and throughout their life. The Safe Start Evaluation Project strives to find effective programs to improve children's chances of future well being.
This four-year RAND study evaluates the effectiveness of the chronic care model and provides ways to improve care for patients with chronic disease.
The RAND Center for Health and Safety in the Workplace conducts research and analysis that helps improve worker health and safety and reduce the economic costs of workplace accidents and illnesses.
RAND Health is researching electronic prescribing as a way to deliver accurate information to the point of care, improving prescribing safety and accuracy.
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