Publications
Children's Health Insurance
 “The Effect of New Insurance Coverage on the Health Status of Low-Income Children in Santa Clara County.” Embry M. Howell and Christopher Trenholm, Health Services Research, September 2006. The Santa Clara County Children’s Health Initiative seeks to provide coverage through the Healthy Kids initiative to all children in the county whose family incomes are below 300 percent of the federal poverty level. This paper provides new evidence on the effects of insurance coverage on children’s health by looking at how Healthy Kids affects the health of the low-income, undocumented children it serves. The authors found that children in the study group continuously insured for one year were significantly less likely to be in fair/poor health and to have functional impairments than the comparison group of newly insured children. The study group also had fewer missed school days, but the difference was significant only among children who did not enroll for a medical reason. The authors conclude that Healthy Kids had a favorable impact on children’s health. Journal Article. Issue Brief.
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Methods Update: Propensity Scoring
 "Using Propensity Scoring to Estimate Program-Related Subgroup Impacts in Experimental Program Evaluations." Peter Z. Schochet and John Burghardt. Evaluation Review, March 2007. This article discusses the use of propensity scoring in experimental program evaluations to estimate impacts for subgroups defined by program features and participants' program experiences. The authors discuss estimation issues, provide specification tests, and review an overlooked data collection design—obtaining predictions that program intake staff make about applicants' likely assignments and experiences—that could improve the quality of matched comparison samples. They demonstrate the approach's effectiveness in producing credible subgroup findings using data from Mathematica's Job Corps evaluation.
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Educational Technology
 "Effectiveness of Reading and Mathematics Software Products: Findings from the First Student Cohort. Report to Congress." Mark Dynarski, Roberto Agodini, Sheila Heaviside, Timothy Novak, Nancy Carey, Larissa Campuzano, Barbara Means, Robert Murphy, William Penuel, Hal Javitz, Deborah Emery, and Willow Sussex, March 2007. The No Child Left Behind Act called for the U.S. Department of Education to conduct a national study of the effectiveness of educational technology. The study identified reading and mathematics software products based on prior evidence of effectiveness and other criteria and used an experimental design to assess the effects of technology products, with volunteering teachers randomly assigned to use or not use selected products. On average, after one year, products did not increase or decrease test scores by amounts that were statistically different from zero. In addition, effects were correlated with some classroom and school characteristics. For reading products, effects on overall test scores were correlated with the student-teacher ratio in first grade classrooms and with the amount of time that products were used in fourth grade classrooms. For math products, effects were uncorrelated with classroom and school characteristics. Read more about the study.
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Medicare Coordinated Care
 "The Evaluation of the Medicare Coordinated Care Demonstration: Findings for the First Two Years." Randall Brown, Deborah Peikes, Arnold Chen, Judy Ng, Jennifer Schore, and Clara Soh, March 2007. Care for beneficiaries with chronic illnesses, such as heart disease and diabetes, is a major expense to the Medicare program, and a major detriment to beneficiaries’ quality of life. The Medicare Coordinated Care Demonstration is testing whether case management and disease management programs can lower costs and improve patient outcomes and well-being in the Medicare fee-for-service population. This publication, the source for a recent report to Congress, details findings from 15 programs during the first two years of Mathematica’s study, the largest random assignment study to date of disease management/case management programs. The report focuses on program impacts over the first year after enrollment for beneficiaries who enrolled during the first year, and over the first 25 months of operation for all enrollees. Findings include program-specific estimates of impacts on survey-based measures of patients’ health status, knowledge, behavior, satisfaction with their health care, quality of care, and quality of life; and claims-based measures of patients’ Medicare service use and expenditures, and the quality of care received. The findings in brief indicate that patients and physicians were generally very satisfied with the program, but few programs had statistically detectable effects on patients’ behavior or use of Medicare services.
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Research Into Practice
 "Moving Research into Practice: Lessons from the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's IDSRN Program." Marsha Gold and Erin Fries Taylor. Implementation Science, March 2007. Applied research aims to provide answers to “real world” questions. Whether that research is used in the real world to encourage innovation and change, however, has typically not been a major research focus. The U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s Integrated Delivery Systems Research Network (IDSRN) was established to encourage implementation of research into practice. This article looks at IDSRN’s success in generating research findings that could be applied in practice. Factors important to success were responsiveness of project work to delivery system needs, ongoing funding to support multiple project phases, and development of applied products or tools that helped users see their operational relevance. Factors impeding success include limited project funding, competing demands on potential research users, and failure to reach the appropriate audience.
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