Health Insurance Coverage of Young Adults: Issues and Broader Considerations

Compares the 19-to-26 age group to others in terms of insurance status by income level, health, and citizenship; access to insurance; and attitudes toward insurance. Discusses reasons for the high uninsured rate, and recommends policy options

The Health Status of New Medicaid Enrollees Under Health Reform

Examines the demographic and health data of those newly eligible for Medicaid coverage, whether younger and healthier or older and less healthy than current enrollees, and how they will affect costs depending on participation rates

A Decade of Coverage Losses: Implications for the Affordable Care Act

Examines 2000-10 trends in employer-sponsored health insurance and Medicaid/CHIP coverage by income group; contributing factors, including a growing low-income population; and projected coverage among low-income adults under the 2010 healthcare reform

Trust in Private and Common Property Experiments

We report the results from a series of experiments designed to investigate behavior in two settings that are frequently posited in the policy literature as generating different outcomes: private property and common property. The experimental settings closely parallel earlier experimental studies of the investment or trust game. The primary research question relates to the effect of the initial allocation of property rights on the level of trust that subjects will extend to others with whom they are linked. We find that assigning the initial endowments as common property of each of N pairs of a first mover and second mover leads to marginally greater cooperation or trust than when the initial endowments are fully owned by the two individual movers as their, respective, private property. Subjectsâ?? decisions are also shown to be correlated with attitudes toward trust and fairness that are measured in post-experiment questionnaires.

Motives for Health Plan-Academic Health Center Relationships: Journal Review of the First Quarter Century

Motives for health plan (HP)-academic health center (AHC) relationships, including both deterrents and inducements, are explored through a review of 153 articles, published from 1970 through 1997, in academic and health care industry journals about HP-AHC relationships. Every article that met inclusion criteria was coded for year, journal, author, audience, type of article, organization of focus, purposes, priorities, affiliation motives, and issues. Peak years were 1973 (the passage of HMO legislation) and the most recent years from 1994 through 1997. The motives to affiliate were found to be different for AHCs and HPs (e.g., physician attitudes, a deterrent for AHCs and inducement for HPs; resources, a deterrent for HPs and inducement for AHCs). Increases in size of HPs and decreases in political power of AHCs have resulted in changes to motives to form relationships. Motives must be acknowledged to move from competitive to collaborative relationships.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/69080/2/10.1177_107755879905600206.pd

Reversing downstream consequences of school hiatus on reading in disadvantaged, at-risk children

The spread of COVID-19 has led to the disruption of K-12 education for about 90% of the world's student population. The effects on children's academic development are unknown. We examined how disruption in schooling over three consecutive summers in disadvantaged minority children affects reading and whether an intensive intervention can ameliorate these effects. Our data were collected prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. We applied Latent Change Score models to examine developmental trends in a longitudinal study of reading in 111 economically disadvantaged children, assessed biannually from grades 1 to 4, including 3 summers (for a total of 6 months of school hiatus). The students fell behind the normative population in their ability to understand written texts, a decrease in their relative percentile of 0.25 of a standard deviation each summer, and an effect 3-4 times greater than prior studies suggested. Compared to children in a comparison group, children who received an evidence-based intervention during the school year were better able to maintain their reading scores. These findings provide evidence that disruptions in schooling, for example, those implemented to slow the spread of COVID-19, may have a significant detrimental effect on the reading abilities of disadvantaged children and that children who received a reading intervention were better able to maintain their reading scores during the hiatus. It is critical that policy makers prioritize the allocation of necessary resources to minimize the negative effects on reading this pandemic has wrought on these most disadvantaged children.Support for the work reported in this article was provided by: The Seedlings Foundation. EE was supported by the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain (ref. PID2019-107570GAI00 / AEI / doi: https://doi.org/10.13039/501100011033

A Closer Look at Self-Esteem, Perceived Social Support, and Coping Strategy: A Prospective Study of Depressive Symptomatology Across the Transition to College

The first year of college is a significant life transition, which is often characterized by stress and may contribute to the development or exacerbation of depressive symptoms. Due to the considerable negative outcomes that are associated with depressive symptoms across the lifespan, it is important to understand the mechanisms and pathways through which depressive symptoms arise. This prospective study examines the mediating and moderating roles of perceived social support and disengagement coping on the association between self-esteem and depressive symptomatology in a sample of 1,118 first-year college students. Results of longitudinal cross-lagged path analyses indicate that self-esteem predicts depressive symptomatology via perceived social support and disengagement coping. The association between self-esteem and perceived social support appear to be bidirectional, in that level of self-esteem predicts perceived social support, and vice versa. Furthermore, disengagement coping was found to moderate the effect of self-esteem on depressive symptomatology, in that increased levels of disengagement coping led to greater depressive symptoms within the context of both high and low self-esteem. However, this pattern was not observed at lower levels of disengagement coping, which indicates high levels of disengagement coping as a particular risk factor for depressive symptomatology, diminishing the advantage of high self-esteem

Memory enhancement produced by post-training exposure to sucrose-conditioned cues

A number of aversive and appetitive unconditioned stimuli (such as shock and food) are known to produce memory enhancement when they occur during the post-training period. Post-training exposure to conditioned aversive stimuli has also been shown to enhance memory consolidation processes. The present study shows for the first time that post-training exposure to conditioned stimuli previously paired with consumption of a sucrose solution also enhances memory consolidation. Male Long Evans rats were trained on a one-session conditioned cue preference (CCP) task on a radial arm maze. Immediately or 2 hours after training, rats consumed a sucrose solution or were exposed to cues previously paired with consumption of sucrose or cues previously paired with water. Twenty-four hours later, the rats were tested for a CCP. Immediate, but not delayed, post-training consumption of sucrose enhanced memory for the CCP. Immediate, but not delayed, post-training exposure to cues previously paired with sucrose, but not with water, also enhanced CCP memory. The possibility that rewarding and aversive conditioned stimuli affect memory by a common physiological process is discussed

Partisan Asymmetries in Online Political Activity

We examine partisan differences in the behavior, communication patterns and social interactions of more than 18,000 politically-active Twitter users to produce evidence that points to changing levels of partisan engagement with the American online political landscape. Analysis of a network defined by the communication activity of these users in proximity to the 2010 midterm congressional elections reveals a highly segregated, well clustered partisan community structure. Using cluster membership as a high-fidelity (87% accuracy) proxy for political affiliation, we characterize a wide range of differences in the behavior, communication and social connectivity of left- and right-leaning Twitter users. We find that in contrast to the online political dynamics of the 2008 campaign, right-leaning Twitter users exhibit greater levels of political activity, a more tightly interconnected social structure, and a communication network topology that facilitates the rapid and broad dissemination of political information.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figures, 6 table

Engaging Long-Term Care Workers in Research: Recruitment Approaches and Participant Characteristics From a Randomized Controlled Trial to Improve COVID-19 Vaccine Confidence.

To describe and compare the recruitment methods employed in a randomized controlled trial targeting long-term care workers, and resulting participant baseline characteristics. We used a multifaceted recruitment process to enroll long-term care workers in our 3-arm randomized controlled trial comparing 2 interventions to enhanced usual practice, for improving COVID-19 vaccine confidence and other outcomes. Adult long-term care workers living in the United States employed within the last 2 years were invited to join the study. Participants also had to meet specific screening criteria related to their degree of worry about the vaccine and/or their vaccination status. We used a participatory approach to engage our long-term care stakeholders in codesigning and executing a combination of recruitment methods, including targeted e-recruitment, paid e-recruitment, and in-person recruitment. Participants were screened, consented, and enrolled online. We implemented a participant verification process to ensure the integrity of our study data, and used a tailored participant management platform to manage enrollment. We enrolled 1930 long-term care workers between May 2022 and January 2023. We met our enrollment target, despite each recruitment method having limitations. Total variable costs of approximately $102,700 were incurred and differed on a per-enrolled participant basis across methods:$25.73 for targeted e-recruitment, $57.12 for paid e-recruitment, and$64.92 for in-person methods. Our sample differed from the national population in age, gender, race/ethnicity, education, and role in long-term care. Differences were also observed between online and in-person recruitment methods. Our results support the feasibility of enrolling a large number of long-term care workers in a randomized controlled trial to increase COVID-19 vaccine confidence. Findings build upon the evidence base for engaging this important population in research, a critical step to improving long-term care resident health and well-being. Results from our trial are anticipated in 2024