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.
In this Resilient Communities podcast, Jennifer Steele discusses the differences in policies and practices between charter and traditional schools in New Orleans, where charter-based reform spread in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
In this Resilient Communities podcast, Jordan R. Fischbach discusses recent research that has helped the city of New Orleans address the challenge of reducing flood risk and is relevant to many other coastal communities that are concerned with water resources, infrastructure planning, rising sea levels, and flooding.
New RAND research finds that eliminating the requirement that all Americans have health insurance would sharply lower the number of people gaining coverage, but would not dramatically increase the cost of buying policies through new insurance exchanges. RAND Economist Christine Eibner discusses the ramifications.
Between 1999 and 2009, U.S. health care spending nearly doubled, climbing from $1.3 trillion to $2.5 trillion. The figures are striking, but what have they meant for individual Americans?
In this December 2011 Congressional Briefing, Gery Ryan discusses policy options and recommendations on how to most effectively fund HIV treatment initiatives throughout the world.
The RAND Bing Center for Health Economics, RAND Labor and Population, and the Journal of Human Capital held a two-day Conference on Health, Aging, and Human Capital. Speakers included RAND's Nicole Maestas, NYU's Michael Grossman, and Harvard's David Wise; all conference videos are available online.
In this December 2011 Congressional Briefing, Katherine Watkins discusses the VA's capacity to deliver care to veterans with mental health and substance use disorders and the quality of the care that is delivered. This congressionally mandated study is the first comprehensive look at the full spectrum of clinical services provided to veterans with mental health issues.
At this November 2011 Policy Forum, Jonathan Schleifer, policy director for Iraq Afghanistan Veterans of America, joined RAND's Terry Schell for a discussion about the challenges faced by and experiences of recent combat veterans.
In this October 2011 Congressional Briefing, Art Kellermann presents a breakdown of how U.S. health care cost growth directly affects the finances of a typical American family.
In light of Congress's upcoming discussion about reauthorization of the Pandemic All-Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA), five RAND experts discuss, in this August 2011 Congressional Briefing, the significant ways in which the U.S. public health system has improved since 9/11, as well as areas to which future improvement efforts should be targeted.
On May 24, 2011, the RAND Corporation presented “Rising Costs of Health Care” as part of its Issues in Focus public outreach series in Santa Monica, California. The program featured Arthur Kellermann, vice president and director of RAND Health.
In this May 2011 Congressional Briefing, behavioral scientist Rajeev Ramchand presents RAND research and analysis on recent increases in suicides among members of the U.S. military.
The Allegheny County Maternal Depression Initiative is a quality improvement effort aimed at improving screening, referral, and engagement in treatment for low-income women at risk for maternal depression. This training session covered topics including risks of depression during pregnancy, treatment planning, management of mood disorder and medication treatment concerns in pregnancy, and psychotropic drugs during lactation.
Discusses the large disparities between boys and men of color in California compared with their white counterparts across four broad domains -- socioeconomic, health, safety, and ready to learn.
In this September 2010 Congressional Briefing, Neil Wenger describes a yearlong study on improving end-of-life care that can help policymakers address payment systems and other issues pertaining to quality of care for critically ill patients.
An estimated 36 percent of American adults have health literacy levels rated at “basic or below,” indicating that they have difficulty obtaining, processing, and understanding basic health information and services. To help healthcare decisionmakers in Missouri identify neighborhood-level “hotspots” of suboptimal health or healthcare that may be due to low health literacy, RAND developed a prototype interactive…
Beth McGlynn, associate director of RAND Health, highlights findings from the RAND COMPARE analysis of U.S. Senate health reform proposal H.R. 3590 and contrasts them with a similar analysis of the House health reform proposal, H.R. 3962.
In this Congressional Briefing held on September 14, 2009, researchers Christopher Nelson and Edward Chan discuss RAND's recently published evaluation of the Cities Readiness Initiative, which helps the nation's largest metropolitan areas develop the ability to rapidly deliver life-saving medications and other medical supplies to their populations. The study has implications for pandemic influenza and other federal public health…
President Obama and several Congressional leaders have recently expressed support for the idea of allowing citizens to buy into a public insurance program as part of any health reform legislation. The intensity of the ensuing debate has been fascinating given the lack of specifics that have been offered by either side.
In this Congressional Briefing held on August 17, 2009, economist Christine Eibner presents findings about which strategies to reduce health care spending in Massachusetts are most (and least) promising. Lessons learned in this Massachusetts study are broadly applicable and could help Congress navigate cost containment proposals in the ongoing health reform debate.
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