October 2008: Policy Brief
The purpose of this Policy Brief is to summarize what is known about the contributors to preterm birth and present summaries of several recent national recommendations to address preterm birth. Today 13% of U.S. births occur before 37 weeks gestational age, often leading to a personal and financial tragedy for families. Preterm birth, before 37 weeks, is now the leading cause of perinatal and infant mortality in the U.S.
The prematurity or preterm birth rate in the U.S. has increased by 35% in 25 years from 9.5% in 1981 to 12.8% in 2006. In 2004 in the U.S., preterm births accounted for 64% of the more than 5,000 infant deaths occurring before one year of age. The public policy implications of preterm birth include alarmingly high health care expenditures over the life course and, from a societal perspective, a significant loss of well-being and workforce productivity. This policy brief reviews what is known about the contributors to prematurity and its impact as well as recent national recommendations to reduce prematurity.
Key Findings
• In Ohio, for example, more than 8,000 preterm births per year may be preventable.
• There are multiple opportunities for substantial public and private cost savings associated with a reduction in preterm births.
To read more, you can download an executive summary or the complete Policy Brief as PDF files.
February 2008: Policy Brief
The purpose of this Policy Brief is to summarize what has been learned about the effects of SCHIP on children and to look more closely at the eligible but uninsured children. It is divided into three major sections. The first section summarizes the evidence on the effects of the SCHIP program on health care access and outcomes for the children that SCHIP did reach. The second section describes patterns of enrollment, explores insurance instability for eligible but uninsured children, and answers the question of whether (and to what degree) attention is focused on enrollment of new children vs. retention of children in the SCHIP program. The final section provides an overview of the current range of issues being considered or proposed to promote the quality of the program and the services it supports.
To learn more, you can download this Policy Brief as a PDF file.
August 17, 2007: New Report Highlights Case for Reauthorizing SCHIP
A new report from The Commonwealth Fund, Reauthorizing SCHIP: Opportunities for Promoting Effective Health Coverage and High-Quality Care for Children and Adolescents, says that Congress and the nation have a historic opportunity to build on these gains.
The report, written by a team of noted child health policy experts, presents a framework for promoting effective health coverage and achieving high quality in both SCHIP and Medicaid, the other major public program that covers low-income children. The strategies discussed in the report include:
- ensuring access to care through eligibility, enrollment, and retention policies;
- providing a robust benefit package;
- strengthening provider capacity;
- measuring performance, improving quality, and providing incentives for high-quality care; and
- promoting the use of health information technology.
"SCHIP reauthorization presents an opportunity to transform the 'good' coverage and quality of care provided by SCHIP into 'great' coverage and quality," says lead author Lisa Simpson, the director of the Child Policy Research Center at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and the National Director for Child Health Policy at the National Initiative for Children's Healthcare Quality (NICHQ). "It represents a chance to expand both the federal government's leadership role and the resources available to support states in developing high-performing, accountable public health care programs for children."
To learn more, you can download Reauthorizing SCHIP: Opportunities for Promoting Effective Health Coverage and High-Quality Care for Children and Adolescents report as a 437K PDF file.
You must have the free Adobe Acrobat" Reader software installed on your computer to read this file. You can download Adobe Acrobat" Reader at Adobe's web site by selecting the version appropriate for your type of computer.
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As a community resource for evidence-based, policy relevant information on the well-being of children, the CPRC puts out a bi-monthly policy brief on a variety of topics.
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