A new study by Penn has found that the opioid epidemic and opioid overdoses are more prevalent in counties across the US that lost auto plants and subsequent economic instability. Read more here.

Harrisburg, PA – Department of Human Services (DHS) Secretary Teresa Miller announced the findings of a study on the effects of permanent supportive housing programs on long-term health and health care spending among Medicaid recipients experiencing homelessness. The study, conducted in partnership with the University of Pittsburgh’s Medicaid Research Center, looked at nearly 5,900 cases from 54 Pennsylvania counties who received permanent supportive housing services from 2011-2016 and found that people who experienced homelessness saw improving health outcomes and decreased Medicaid utilization and spending after receiving permanent supportive housing services.

Continue reading “Human Services Study Finds Positive Effects for Medicaid Recipients with Housing Support” →

HRSA’s Christina Lachance, MPH, Sabrina Matoff-Stepp, PhD, Jane Segebrecht, MPH, and Nancy Mautone-Smith, MSW, LCSW coauthored a commentary that describes the development and early implementation of The HRSA Strategy to Address Intimate Partner Violence, 2017-2020 (PDF – 428 KB).

The article highlights key features of an integrated approach to address IPV across HRSA programs and offers recommendations for implementing similar efforts.

Read the article.

Rural areas have long been racially and ethnically diverse. Yet most research on rural health focuses on rural-urban disparities without an explicit focus on within-rural differences in health by race and ethnicity. In that research on rural-urban disparities in health, rural residents tend to fare worse on most measures, including mortality, health status, access to care, and use of preventive services. Less is known about whether there are differences in healthcare use among rural residents by race and ethnicity. In this from the University of Minnesota Rural Health Research center, researchers examine differences in preventive care among rural residents by race and ethnicity.  The brief can be accessed here.

Rural residents often travel farther to access medical care, especially obstetric care, and are more likely to be uninsured or underinsured than urban residents, contributing to higher rates of maternal morbidity. To raise awareness and increase understanding of the relationship between transfer, delivery hospital location, and severe maternal morbidity and mortality (SMMM) for rural residents, researchers at the University of Minnesota Rural Health Research Center compared data for rural and urban residents who gave birth between 2008 and 2014, to describe the relationship between a need to transfer patients for specialized care and increased risk for maternal morbidity and mortality.  The report can be accessed here.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently released two reports that compare health issues between metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas of the U.S.  In Potentially Excess Deaths from the Five Leading Causes of Death, researchers found that the gap in the percentages of preventable deaths between rural and urban counties widened over the eight-year study period for cancer, heart disease, and chronic lower respiratory disease, remained relatively stable for stroke, and decreased for unintentional injuries.  A study on Lung Cancer Incidence found that rates decreased in both urban and rural areas during the ten year period from 2007-2016, but the smallest decrease occurred among females living in nonmetropolitan counties.  Click here to access the report.

Large, brand-name drugmakers could lose $1 trillion in sales and remain profitable enough to maintain their current investments in research and development, according to a report released last week by West Health and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Sean Dickson, director of health policy at the West Health Policy Center and the lead author of the analysis, said the findings suggest drug pricing regulations would not substantially harm the industry. (Source: Healthcare Finance News, 11/14)

The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) released Industrial Make-Up of the Appalachian Region, a new report examining employment and earnings across the Region. Drawing on data from 15 industry sectors, the report catalogs how the Region’s industrial make-up and earnings compare to that of the country as a whole. The report primarily focuses on the period from 2002–2017 — the years immediately before, during, and after the Great Recession – and finds that employment growth varies across the Region. Overall, while post-Recession employment growth has been positive in Appalachia, it lags behind the growth that was experienced by the country as a whole. The report also finds an overall employment shift across the Region towards professional & technical services; health & social services; and tourism-related jobs.

Among the Report’s key findings: from 2012 to 2017, employment across all industries in Appalachia grew 4.7 percent. While growth was positive, employment nationwide grew 9.6 percent during the same time period. From 2012 to 2017, the fastest growth in employment occurred in Appalachia’s South Central and Southern subregions, at 6.6 percent and 10.4 percent, respectively. In 2017, the five industries with the largest employment shares in the Region were professional & technical services (12.1 percent), health and social services (11.6 percent), retail and trade (11.1 percent); state and local government (11.1 percent); and manufacturing (10 percent). In 2017, 10 percent of Appalachia’s total employment was in the manufacturing industry, a larger share than the country as a whole (6.8 percent).