Stressed and Strapped: Caregivers in California

Profiles the demographics and self-reported physical and mental health status of informal caregivers caring for a family member or friend, including high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease; psychological distress; and unhealthy behaviors

Health Status of the Uninsured: Opportunities for Improvement

Provides estimates of the geographic variations in the rates of self-reported fair or poor health status, asthma, and hypertension among uninsured children and adults in California

Many Uninsured Children Qualify for Medi-Cal or Healthy Families

Examines the public health insurance eligibility of children in California who did not have health insurance coverage for some or all of the year in 2002, to highlight the geographic variations in children's uninsured eligibility rates

Holding On: Older Californians With Disabilities Rely on Public Services to Remain Independent

Presents findings from a study of low-income older Californians with disabilities receiving Medicare, Medi-Cal, and In-Home Supportive Services; their unmet physical, mental health, and social needs; and limited care options. Outlines policy implications

Analyzing the current state of Oregon's skilled nursing facilities

The purpose of this project is to paint a picture of the state of Oregon’s Skilled Nursing Facilities for the 2015 state fiscal year. Skilled Nursing Facilities are an important part of Oregon’s Long Term care continuum that provides care to individuals needing post-acute or on-going care. The URAP student assisted Public Health faculty and PhD students in preparing a report for the Oregon Department of Human Services. The student extracted, managed, summarized, and performed quality control on data from Skilled Nursing Facility Cost Reports and Revenue Statements. This data was further analyzed by the PhD students. The student also created graphs and tables of these data as well as other data from the Skilled Nursing Facility Minimum Data Set (MDS). The student performed new analyses of quality measure data retrieved though Nursing Home Compare, which is managed by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid services (CMS). These analyses described the variation in performance across Oregon Skilled Nursing Facilities. For example, moderate to severe pain reported in short stays was 11% in the highest performing 25% of all facilities and 42% in the lowest performing 25% of facilities, which highlights differences between the highest and lowest performing facilities

Community as a source of health in three racial/ethnic communities in Oregon: a qualitative study

BACKGROUND: A 2011 report by the Oregon Health Authority and the Department of Human Services documented disparities in its Latino and American Indian populations on multiple individual-level health indicators. However, research is lacking on the social contexts in which Latinos and American Indians in Oregon live and how these environments influence the health of communities as a whole. To help fill this gap, this study sought to contextualize the social environments that influence the health of Latinos and American Indian residents in three Oregon communities. METHODS: Guided by an ecological framework, we conducted one-time semi-structured qualitative interviews with 26 study participants to identify the prominent health-related issues in the communities and to examine the factors that study participants perceived as enabling or inhibiting healthy lifestyles of community residents. We used a grounded theory approach to perform content and thematic analyses of the data. RESULTS: Study participants identified preventable chronic conditions, such as diabetes, obesity, and hypertension, as the most pressing health concerns in their communities. Results showed that traditional and cultural activities and strong family and community cohesion were viewed as facilitators of good community health. Poverty, safety concerns, insufficient community resources, and discrimination were perceived as barriers to community health. Three themes emerged from the thematic analyses: social connectedness is integral to health; trauma has an ongoing negative impact on health; and invisibility of residents in the community underlies poor health. CONCLUSIONS: This study’s findings provide insight to the social contexts which operate in the lives of some Latinos and American Indians in Oregon. While participants identified community-level factors as important to health, they focused more on the social connections of individuals to each other and the relationships that residents have with their communities at-large. Our findings may also help to explain how the intra- and inter-personal levels, the community/institutional level, and the macro level/public policy contexts can serve to influence health in these communities. For example, trauma and invisibility are not routinely examined in community health assessment and improvement planning activities; nonetheless, these factors appear to be at play affecting the health of residents.Keywords: American Indian, Latino, Migrant and seasonal farmworkers, Trauma, Community healt