RAND advances understanding of health and health behaviors and examines how the organization and financing of care affect costs, quality, and access. RAND's body of research—conducted primarily through the RAND Health division—includes innovative studies of health insurance, health care reform, health information technology, and women's health, as well as topical concerns such as obesity, complementary and alternative medicine, and PTSD in veterans and survivors of catastrophe.
With the complex process of implementing the ACA underway, RAND research is tracking the progress of implementation and assessing the potential consequences of choices facing federal and state governments, employers, families, and individuals.
In its second term, the Obama Administration can restrain further health care spending growth—without compromising quality—by employing four broad strategies: fostering efficient and accountable providers, engaging and empowering consumers, promoting population health, and facilitating high-value innovation.
Journal Article
The monetary cost of dementia in the United States ranges from $157 billion to $215 billion annually, making the disease more costly to the nation than either heart disease or cancer. The greatest cost is associated with providing institutional and home-based long-term care rather than medical services.
Journal Article
Merchants who hold more pro-enforcement attitudes engage in more responsible beverage service training practices, which in turn is associated with greater enforcement of underage drinking. These attitudes are potential targets of prevention efforts.
Journal Article
In the age of austerity, Fire and Rescue Services (FRS) provision is now the focus of policymakers' efficiency drives.
Journal Article
A team from RAND and the University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC) developed a toolkit to help hospitals enhance their quality improvement efforts using quality indicators from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Journal Article
The study explores whether and how lifetime violence exposure is related to a set of negative symptoms: child internalizing and externalizing behavior problems, child trauma symptoms, and parenting stress.
Journal Article
Health and development organizations increasingly promote livelihood interventions to improve health and economic outcomes for people living with HIV (PLHIV) receiving treatment with antiretroviral therapy (ART).
Commentary
Multistate plans are most likely to appeal to out-of-state students, interstate migrants, out-of-state workers, seasonal movers (e.g., “snowbirds”), and similar groups that require improved access to health care across state lines.
Commentary
Removing the constraints on Medicare would not only lead to lower prices at the drugstore, hospital and doctor's office, it could spark a new era of healthcare innovation, says Arthur Kellermann.
News Release
Expanding Medicaid in Pennsylvania under the Affordable Care Act would boost federal revenue to the state by more than $2 billion annually and provide 340,000 residents with health insurance.
Report
If Pennsylvania opts into Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, more residents would have health coverage and the state would enjoy a positive economic effect. However, benefits would have a long-term cost, with uneven regional results.
Commentary
An ample body of evidence indicates that the benefits of keeping a gun for protection are substantially outweighed by the associated risks, writes Art Kellermann.
Commentary
When it comes to women's health, cancer gets a good deal of the attention; somehow, it hasn’t fully registered that so many of our mothers, sisters, friends and daughters are being affected by another, often silent killer, writes Chloe E. Bird.
Report
The authors identified and characterized population groups that would likely be interested in enrolling in the multistate plans established by the Affordable Care Act and developed a methodology to project participation and estimate premiums.
Report
Simultaneous developmental delays among young children and depression among parents can create serious challenges for many families. However, results from the Helping Families Raise Healthy Children initiative suggest that aligning early intervention and behavioral health systems can help.
News Release
Lowering the costs of healthy foods in supermarkets increases the amount of fruits, vegetables, and whole grain foods that people eat, while also appearing to reduce consumption of nutritionally less-desirable foods.
Research Brief
The Helping Families Raise Healthy Children initiative addressed depression among parents of children with early childhood developmental delays, aligning the early intervention and behavioral health systems with a focus on relationship-based care.
Journal Article
Lowering the costs of healthy foods in supermarkets increases the amount of fruits, vegetables, and whole grain foods that people eat, while also appearing to reduce consumption of nutritionally less-desirable foods.
Blog
If a medical treatment worked only a fraction of the time and resulted in bad outcomes more often than not, practitioners would not make this treatment the default approach. Yet that is exactly what has happened when it comes to CPR for individuals 85 years and older who suffer cardiac arrest in a community setting.
Journal Article
Women living in more compact communities had a lower probability of experiencing a coronary heart disease (CHD) event or dying as a result of CHD.
Commentary
New York should see the judge's ruling as an opportunity to revise the law to close the loopholes, including the Big Gulp exemption, and develop regulations in line with the scientific consensus that even 16 ounces is way too much, writes Deborah Cohen.
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