Children's Health Insurance
 Background reports from a national evaluation for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services address a number of important issues related to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP):
"SCHIP at 10: A Synthesis of the Evidence on Substitution of SCHIP for Other Coverage." So Limpa-Amara, Angela Merrill, and Margo Rosenbach, September 2007. When SCHIP was enacted in 1997, policymakers sought to safeguard against the substitution of SCHIP for other insurance coverage. This report synthesizes and assesses evidence from published and unpublished literature and state SCHIP annual reports on the magnitude of substitution in SCHIP. Wide-ranging estimates across studies are explained as a function of differences in purposes, methods, and analytic perspectives.
"SCHIP at 10: A Synthesis of the Evidence on Access to Care in SCHIP." Shanna Shulman and Margo Rosenbach, January 2007. SCHIP has made substantial gains in providing affordable health coverage to children. However, health insurance alone does not ensure access to needed health services. This paper presents recent evidence about changes in access to care associated with enrollment in SCHIP.
"Detecting Enrollment Outbreaks in Three States: The Link Between Program Enrollment and Outreach." Carol Irvin, Christopher Trenholm, and Margo Rosenbach, December 2006. Little is known about the effectiveness of outreach activities in SCHIP. This paper identifies outreach activities and other factors that are associated with state and local trends in the number of new SCHIP enrollees.
"SCHIP at 10: A Synthesis of the Evidence on Retention." Shanna Shulman, Margo Rosenbach, and Sylvia Kuo, November 2006. Retention is key in achieving SCHIP’s mission to reduce the number of uninsured children. This paper synthesizes the available evidence on disenrollment rates and reasons for disenrollment to produce estimates of SCHIP retention rates. The paper also summarizes the evidence on state SCHIP policies that influence retention.
"SCHIP and Medicaid: Working Together to Keep Low-Income Children Insured." Angela Merrill and Margo Rosenbach, November 2006. There are many reasons to promote retention and continuous enrollment for low-income children in SCHIP and Medicaid: to prevent access to care problems and disruptions in preventive care, to lower rates of uninsurance, to lower administrative costs for states, and to maintain stable enrollment in managed care organizations. This paper examines SCHIP enrollment and retention patterns in six states over a three-year period (1999-2001). It provides further evidence on retention, paying particular attention to how SCHIP and traditional Medicaid work together to provide continuous public health insurance coverage.
"Continued Progress in Performance Measurement Reporting by SCHIP." Margo Rosenbach, Anna Katz, and Sibyl Day, September 2006. In recent years, CMS has focused increasing attention on the reporting of program performance measures within SCHIP. This memo analyzes trends in state reporting from fiscal years 2003 to 2005, compares SCHIP performance measures to Medicaid and commercial benchmarks, and makes recommendations for improving performance measurement in SCHIP.
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The National Institutes of Health has selected an article from our Feeding Infants and Toddlers Study as one of the 25 most significant dietary supplement research advances of the past year. The article, "Feeding Infants and Toddlers Study: Do Vitamin and Mineral Supplements Contribute to Nutrient Adequacy or Excess Among U.S. Infants and Toddlers?" by Ronette Briefel, Charlotte Hanson, Mary Kay Fox, Timothy Novak, and Paula Ziegler, originally published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, was selected for the 2006 issue of the 
Erin Fries Taylor has been named associate director of health research for the DC office. Her areas of expertise include health care access, Medicaid managed care, Medicare, and uninsured and vulnerable populations.