Note from the Director

Policymakers, regulators, and other stakeholders need to know which state policies are truly effective. However, determining if a policy actually caused changes in specific outcomes is fundamentally challenging. Not all policy evaluation studies are equally rigorous; some have major flaws in their analytic approach or limitations due to the data used.

Consistent with OPTIC’s mission to be a national resource, we have recently published a pragmatic guide to help decisionmakers determine how much they can trust the results of a health policy evaluation. Megan Schuler and her team focused on state policies because much of the public health-related policy action occurs at the state level. The guide offers a few rules of thumb to identify policy evaluations that provide strong evidence about whether there is a cause and effect relationship between a policy and an outcome. The guide also highlights some red flags indicating that a study’s findings should be viewed with caution.

The guide is a valuable contribution to our growing library of public goods including policy datasets, simulation tools, and specialized products. Please visit the OPTIC Policy Datasets page to see recent updates to available datasets such as: Naloxone Access laws through 2022, Good Samaritan laws through 2021, Office-Based Buprenorphine Treatment (OBBT) laws through 2019, and State Section 1115 IMD Exclusion Waivers data through 2020.

We always welcome your comments and suggestions at OPTIC@rand.org. – Bradley Stein, Director OPTIC