On the Evidence
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A podcast hosted by Mathematica’s J.B. Wogan that examines what we know about today’s most urgent challenges and how we can make progress in addressing them. Reimagining the way the world gathers and uses data, Mathematica uncovers the evidence that offers our partners the confidence and clarity they need to find out what can be done, how to make it happen, and where to go next.
Available episodes
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Sep 8, 2021
Reflections on a Pioneering Career in Economics and Public Policy Research | Episode 61
Our guest for this episode of On the Evidence is Anita Summers, a former member of Mathematica's Board of Directors and a pioneer in the fields of economics and public policy research. Summer's career includes research posts with the National Bureau of Economic Research, Standard Oil, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. During her time at the Federal Reserve, she developed expertise in urban economic development and education. Summers has held a variety of academic appointments, including as a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where she started the first public policy department in a business school. From 1993 through 2019, Summers was also a member of Mathematica’s board of directors, serving as board chair for most of that time.
On the latest episode of On the Evidence, Summers shares what it was like to embark on a career in economics as a woman in the 1940s, the sexism she encountered, how she navigated those challenges, and the role her family played in her career choices. As an early practitioner of using data and statistical analysis to inform contemporary policy debates, she also weighs in on how the field of evidence-based policy has changed and what lies ahead for the profession.
Find a full transcript of the episode here: https://www.mathematica.org/blogs/reflections-on-a-pioneering-career-in-economics-and-public-policy-research
Read Summers’s article from 1973 on equity in school financing for the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s Business Review: https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/business-review-federal-reserve-bank-philadelphia-5580/march-1973-557534/equity-school-financing-523404
Read Summers’s article from 1975 on measuring the effect of school resources on learning for the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s Business Review: https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/business-review-federal-reserve-bank-philadelphia-5580/february-1975-557556/school-resources-help-learning-efficiency-equity-philadelphia-public-schools-523479
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Aug 17, 2021
Lessons from a Successful Medicare Program Integrity Demonstration | Episode 60
Almost seven years ago, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) launched an initiative to test a possible solution to improper use of ambulance rides, long cited as a major source of waste and abuse in the Medicare program. The idea was pretty simple: Require companies that provide patients with repetitive, scheduled, non-emergent ambulance transport (RSNAT) for certain types of health care, such as dialysis or cancer treatments, to get prior authorization from CMS before providing service and submitting a claim for payment.
Mathematica evaluated impacts of the initiative, which was implemented in the District of Columbia and eight states. Because non-emergency ambulance service use is rare in the Medicare program, the study focused on Medicare beneficiaries who are most likely to use RSNAT services—those with end-stage renal disease and/or severe pressure ulcers. Those two groups account for about 85 percent of Medicare RSNAT claims, so any change in use and spending would be most detectable among those patients.
The most recent Mathematica evaluation found that, as a result of prior authorization, RSNAT costs declined by over 70 percent since the initiative started. Importantly, spending less on RSNAT services resulted in a decrease in overall Medicare fee-for-service spending of more than 2 percent, equal to about $1 billion since the initiative started. All of this occurred without any evidence of a decline in access to care or the quality of care beneficiaries received.
Late last year, CMS announced that it would expand the use of prior authorization for RSNAT services nationwide. On this episode of On the Evidence, guests Amy Cinquegrani of CMS and Andrew Asher of Mathematica discuss lessons that could inform the national rollout as well as novel approaches for using data analytics to further reduce improper health care use and payments.
Cinquegrani directs the Division of Payment Methods and Strategies at the Center for Program Integrity within CMS.
Asher is a senior fellow at Mathematica, where he focuses on using data to help health care payers strengthen the integrity of their programs, realize cost savings, monitor programs, and improve program outcomes.
Find a full transcript of the episode here: mathematica.org/blogs/lessons-from-a-successful-medicare-program-integrity-demonstration-soon-to-expand-nationwide
Read a short fact sheet summarizing findings from the evaluation of the Medicare Prior Authorization Model for Repetitive Scheduled Non-Emergent Ambulance Transport: https://innovation.cms.gov/data-and-reports/2021/rsnat-finlevalrpt-fg
Read the CMS announcement that the Medicare Prior Authorization Model for RSNAT would expand nationwide: https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/press-releases/cms-expand-successful-ambulance-program-integrity-payment-model-nationwide
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Aug 11, 2021
Lessons from Southwest Detroit's Efforts to Support Informal Child Care | Episode 59
Five years ago, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, in partnership with the Kresge Foundation, launched Hope Starts Here, a community-focused, citywide initiative aimed at ensuring that all children in Detroit are prepared for kindergarten by increasing access to high quality early care and education.
As part of the citywide initiative, Mathematica, with financial support from the Kellogg Foundation, worked to implement promising strategies to enhance the quality of informal child care, which is defined as unlicensed care provided by family, friends, and neighbors. Outside of care provided by a parent, informal child care is the most common form of care for infants and toddlers in the United States. The project focused on providing resources and support informal providers in southwest Detroit, one of 10 neighborhoods in the city where the number of children who need early care and education vastly exceeds the number of available, licensed slots. Even when a licensed slot is available, families may still prefer informal care because they believe the providers are more trustworthy, provide more culturally consistent care, and offer more affordable and convenient care.
On the latest episode of On the Evidence, people involved in the effort to support informal child care in southwest Detroit reflect on the experience. Given how many families in United States rely on this form of care, insights on how to strengthen the quality of care and education offered by informal providers could help make the overall child care and early education system stronger and more equitable across the country. Guests for the episode are:
• Linda Jackson, an informal care provider
• Violeta Ramirez, an informal care provider
• AleshaNicole, a teaching artist at Living Arts, a neighborhood nonprofit that provides arts education programs to engage and inspire youth, families, and teachers
• Amanda Holiday, an early childhood specialist at Congress of Communities, a resident-led organizing and advocacy agency working for change in the areas of public safety and education
• Eileen Storer Smith, a program officer at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation
• Cleo Jacobs Johnson, a senior researcher at Mathematica
Read the issue brief from Mathematica on supporting informal child care providers in southwest Detroit: http://mathematica.org/news/insights-from-a-community-collaborative-to-improve-informal-child-care-in-detroit
Read a blog by Mathematica’s Mynti Hossain, Nazihah Siddiqui, and Cleo Jacobs Johnson about why supporting informal child care providers is key to advancing equity: mathematica.org/blogs/supporting-informal-child-care-providers-is-key-to-advancing-equity
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Jun 23, 2021
Learning from an Early Childhood Nonprofit that Serves Fathers | Episode 58
All over the country, federally funded Head Start programs promote the school readiness of young children ages birth through five from families with low incomes. These programs provide early education and a range of comprehensive services at no cost to the family. Although Head Start programs have historically empowered parents to be involved in their children’s learning and development, it’s been more common for mothers to be the focus of those efforts. Realizing the important role that fathers play in their children’s development and the family’s well-being, Head Start is increasingly working to engage fathers in program services.
This episode of On the Evidence focuses on Bright Beginnings, a nonprofit in Washington, DC, that provides both center-based and home-based Head Start programming for children and families. It is notable for its robust set of services and supports that are designed to help families by helping fathers.
The guests for this episode are Danielle DeLisle, a research analyst at Mathematica, and two employees at Bright Beginnings, Anthony Sessoms and Ryan Pratt. Sessoms oversees the nonprofit’s fatherhood initiative. Pratt is a maintenance technician at Bright Beginnings and a father who has participated in its fatherhood programming. This episode was made possible with support from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
This episode returns to a topic On the Evidence has explored before: fathers’ engagement in human services programs. Fathers play an important role in their children’s development, and most fathers want to be involved with their children’s lives. However, many government and nonprofit programs were originally designed to serve women and children, and excluded fathers in the process.
That’s starting to change. More government agencies, nonprofits, and researchers are exploring strategies that embrace fathers’ desire to be involved with their children. ASPE has partnered with Mathematica to study strategies for including and engaging fathers in social service programming. The ultimate goal is to better support the well-being of families.
The episode has two parts: a long-form conversation about Bright Beginnings with Sessoms and Pratt, followed by a brief discussion with DeLisle about related research from Mathematica and ASPE.
Learn more about the partnership between ASPE and Mathematica to identify the strategies human services programs use to engage fathers: https://aspe.hhs.gov/father-engagement
Listen to a previous episode of On the Evidence about how fatherhood programs pivoted to keep engaging fathers during the COVID-19 pandemic: http://mathematica.org/blogs/how-fatherhood-programs-supported-dads-during-the-pandemic
A transcript of the episode is available here: http://mathematica.org/blogs/new-insights-from-an-early-childhood-nonprofit-that-supports-fathers
Help us improve the show. Please take our listener survey at tinyurl.com/ontheevidence. Upon completion of the survey, you will be given the option to provide an email address that will be entered into a drawing for a chance to win a $50 e-gift card.
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May 12, 2021
Your Contact Tracing Workforce Can Drive Equity and Mitigate Infectious Disease Risks | Episode 57
Contact tracing is an important public health tool for containing the spread of disease, including COVID-19. But contact tracers are effective only if they can persuade people to answer questions about recent whereabouts and who else might have been exposed. Contact tracers are more likely to be successful in their outreach if they and the people they are contacting have similar backgrounds. Currently, no one collects and reports information on the composition of the COVID-19 workforce in communities across the country, making it difficult to know whether the workforce could be more effective with focused recruitment strategies. However, a partnership between Mathematica and the Public Health Foundation sheds some light on who is engaged in contact tracing during the pandemic and how their backgrounds compare with the backgrounds of people in their local communities.
On this episode of On the Evidence, guests Ilya Plotkin and Jia Pu discuss an interactive dashboard that uses a large and unique national data set to visualize demographic data of COVID-19 contact tracing trainees and the communities they serve.
• Plotkin is the director of the TRAIN Learning Network, a service of the Public Health Foundation that provides a clearinghouse of learning opportunities, including free training on contact tracing, for health professionals. Although it is not the only source of training on contact tracing, it is one of the largest. As of early April 2021, more than 40,000 people participated in its training on COVID-19 contact tracing.
• Pu is a health researcher at Mathematica who led the development of the dashboard based on data from the TRAIN Learning Network and other sources.
During the podcast, Plotkin and Pu share how their personal backgrounds as part of Russian and Chinese immigrant communities in the U.S. motivated them to develop a resource for culturally sensitive, equitable, and effective contact tracing during the pandemic. They discuss potential applications of the dashboard and important limitations of the data. They also explain why contact tracing, as a tool for controlling and preventing disease spread, will only grow in importance as more people are vaccinated, infections decline, and more parts of the economy, such as schools and offices, reopen.
Find a transcript of the conversation here: https://bit.ly/3w1LGKP
Read a blog post by Ilya and Jia that provides further context about the COVID-19 contact tracing workforce dashboard: https://bit.ly/2Q3IEpY
Explore the COVID-19 contact tracing workforce dashboard: https://bit.ly/3tB2DtK
Email CTINFO@mathematica-mpr.com if you would like your information about the contact tracing workforce to be included in the dashboard.
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Apr 28, 2021
How Fatherhood Programs Supported Dads During the Pandemic | Episode 56
In partnership with the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Mathematica has been gathering information on what works in engaging fathers across a wide range of human services programs, with the goal of helping fathers and families thrive. The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted many of the typical ways organizations support fathers and their families, but it has also provided motivation to be creative, to adapt, and to experiment with digital services that have certain advantages in helping fathers meet their goals over traditional in-person services.
On this episode of On the Evidence, guests John Ward, Sean Wilson, Richard Barr, Kirk Berry, and Rebekah Selekman discuss COVID-19’s implications for delivering fatherhood engagement services during and after the pandemic.
• Ward is a father who shares experience working with a local nonprofit, Father to Father, in Charleston, SC.
• Wilson is an intervention specialist at Father to Father who worked with Ward.
• Barr is the vice president of strategic and organizational development at the South Carolina Center for Fathers and Families, a statewide nonprofit that operates six local fatherhood organizations, including Father to Father.
• Berry is an expert on responsible fatherhood programs at Public Strategies, a public policy research and consulting firm.
• Selekman is a researcher at Mathematica leading the KEEP Fathers Engaged project with ASPE.
Find a full transcript of the episode here: https://bit.ly/3aNxOvp
Learn more about the partnership between ASPE and Mathematica to identify strategies used to engage fathers across human service programming: https://aspe.hhs.gov/father-engagement
Some of the clips from this episode come from a webinar hosted by the American Public Human Services Association (APHSA). We thank APHSA for allowing us to use clips from its Third Thursday Virtual Mini-Series, which is available here: https://www.aphsathirdthursday.com/
Help us improve the show. Please take our listener survey at tinyurl.com/ontheevidence
Upon completion of the survey, you will be given the option to provide an email address that will be entered into a drawing for a chance to win a $50 e-gift card.
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Apr 21, 2021
A Conversation about Diversity, Equity, and Justice | Episode 55
On this episode of On the Evidence, guests Patricia A. King, LaVerne H. Council, and Akira Bell discuss diversity in evidence-based public policy and how it relates to issues of inclusion and justice. They are all members of Mathematica's Board of Directors who recently helped develop the company's aspirational vision that by 2035, "Mathematica is shaping an equitable and just world in which evidence drives decisions for global impact." They bring unique perspectives as Black women who are leaders in the fields of law, medicine, and technology.
Patricia is a professor emerita at Georgetown Law. LaVerne is a founder and the chief executive officer of Emerald One, which works with mission-driven leaders and organizations to create and execute business and technology strategies that enact positive change. Akira is a senior vice president and the chief information officer at Mathematica.
Find a full transcript of the episode here: https://bit.ly/3dXAZmc
Find LaVerne's podcast, Brilliant in 20 here: https://bit.ly/3tvrfFe
Find Akira's blog on ensuring that data security, privacy, and ethics are at the heart of the digital transformation occurring at Mathematica and other evidence-building organizations: https://bit.ly/3e81hB5
Read an interview with Pat about the 25th anniversary of the Belmont Report here: https://bit.ly/3uOgTAC
Read an interview with Pat about her career as a civil rights leader here: https://bit.ly/3tp5Hu0
Help us improve the show. Please take our listener survey at tinyurl.com/ontheevidence
Upon completion of the survey, participants can choose to enter a drawing for a chance to win a $50 e-gift card.
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Mar 31, 2021
The Value and Feasibility of COVID-19 Testing in K-12 Schools | Episode 54
In late March, the Biden administration announced that it was investing $10 billion to ramp up COVID-19 screening testing to help schools reopen. The expansion of screening tests in schools follows a February report from Mathematica that drew lessons from the experiences of six pilot sites that implemented COVID-19 testing in schools. These pilot programs—in Central Falls, Rhode Island; Los Angeles, California; Tulsa, Oklahoma; New Orleans, Louisiana; Louisville, Kentucky; and Washington, DC—were conducted with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy, and Johns Hopkins University. The report provided insights about the acceptability, feasibility, and effectiveness of adding a testing program to schools’ existing COVID-19 related plans.
For this episode of On the Evidence, guests Jennifer Harper, Sarah Hanck, and Divya Vohra discuss findings from the Mathematica report, impacts of the report so far, more recent lessons based on Tulsa’s experience implementing testing, and what leaders in schools and communities across the country need to know about using antigen testing as a screening tool.
Harper is the project manager for COVID antigen testing in schools in Tulsa.
Hanck is a senior advisor at the Rockefeller Foundation for strategy and impact who has provided guidance and support to Mathematica as it gathered evidence about antigen testing in the six pilot sites.
Vohra is a senior researcher at Mathematica who coauthored the report on the pilots.
Read Mathematica's report on the partnership between six pilot sites and the Rockefeller Foundation to implement COVID-19 rapid antigen tests in schools: mathematica.org/news/research-supported-by-the-rockefeller-foundation-strengthens-the-evidence-base-for-reopening-k-12
Help us improve the show. Please take our listener survey at tinyurl.com/ontheevidence
Upon completion of the survey, you will be given the option to provide an email address that will be entered into a drawing for a chance to win a $50 e-gift card.
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Mar 10, 2021
Using Evidence to Guide Employment Assistance Strategies during and after the Pandemic | Episode 53
March 2021 marks the one-year anniversary of the World Health Organization officially declaring the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. The disease we’ve come to know as COVID-19 has now infected more than 28 million Americans and led to at least half a million deaths in the United States. COVID-19 has also incurred serious damage to the nation’s economy. In February, the number of unemployed persons was 10 million, up from 5.7 million a year earlier.
On this episode of On the Evidence, guests George Putnam, Dana Rotz, and Naihobe Gonzalez discuss the current distressed economy and evidence-based ideas about how to help workers who have been negatively affected by the pandemic.
• Putnam, the labor market information director at the Illinois Department of Employment Security, helps the Midwest Collaborative, a consortium of nine states that share current administrative data across sectors and state lines to develop insights to support reemployment and economic recovery efforts.
• Rotz is a senior researcher at Mathematica who leads a team at Mathematica that is producing short summaries of research related to pressing employment issues during the pandemic.
• Gonzalez is also a senior researcher at Mathematica who coauthored a recent report for the U.S. Department of Education on findings from two experiments that allowed the use of Pell Grants to help displaced workers earn credentials that might quickly improve a person’s job prospects.
To find a written transcript of the episode and to learn more about the data and research discussed on this episode, visit mathematica.org/commentary/using-evidence-to-guide-employment-assistance-strategies-during-and-after-the-pandemic.
Help us improve the show. Please take our listener survey at tinyurl.com/ontheevidence
Upon completion of the survey, you will be given the option to provide an email address that will be entered into a drawing for a chance to win a $50 e-gift card.
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Feb 24, 2021
Supporting Economic Mobility Through Coaching and Navigation | Episode 52
Nearly a year after COVID-19 took root in the United States, Americans are still dealing with the pandemic’s economic fallout. In January 2021, more than 10 million Americans were unemployed, up from roughly 5.8 million a year earlier. On this episode of On the Evidence, four guests discuss an increasingly popular approach for helping people find jobs and achieve other, related goals that provide economic security, such as getting a GED, buying a car, and improving a credit score. The approach combines two related services called coaching and navigation.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation partnered with Mathematica to better understand what coaching and navigation look like in practice, how the approaches are helping people through remote services during the pandemic, how they can be used to address racial and social inequities, and what evidence currently exists about their efficacy. In addition to hosting a virtual convening and producing a series of issue briefs on the topic, Mathematica invited the following experts involved with coaching and navigation to share their experiences on this episode of On the Evidence:
- Ty Wright, a community engagement coordinator at AppleTree Early Learning Public Charter School, who has benefited from coaching and navigation
- Lucy Smart, the program coordinator of parent engagement for LIFT-DC, who also provides coaching services
- Brian Marroquin, a senior program director for LIFT, a national nonprofit that provides coaching and navigation services in four cities
- Sheena McConnell, a senior fellow at Mathematica who studies employment programs that help vulnerable families
Read about current knowledge on the effectiveness of coaching and navigation in facilitating economic mobility: https://bit.ly/37IZgc9
Help us improve the show. Please take our listener survey. Find it at the link below:
tinyurl.com/ontheevidence
Upon completion of the survey, you will be given the option to provide an email address that will be entered into a drawing for a chance to win a $50 e-gift card.
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Jan 27, 2021
Modeling the Spread of COVID-19 on College Campuses | Episode 51
On this episode of On the Evidence, guests Ravi Goyal and Natasha Martin share lessons from using an agent-based model to predict the spread of COVID-19 in a university setting. Goyal is a senior statistician at Mathematica who has an expertise in epidemic modeling. Martin is an infectious disease economic modeler and an associate professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health at the University of California San Diego. They recently collaborated on a project that estimated the potential impact of masking, social distancing, and regular testing on the spread of COVID-19 at UC San Diego.
Learn more about the COVID-19 agent-based modeling partnership between UC San Diego and Mathematica here: https://bit.ly/3sLL4bp
Explore the web tool Goyal and Martin discuss on the podcast here: https://bit.ly/39UMXtz
Read more about the agent-based model and results in a recent article published in the journal, Clinical Infectious Diseases here: https://bit.ly/3r9TqYX
Lea…
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Jan 13, 2021
Reflecting on 2020, Previewing 2021 | Episode 50
Between a pandemic, an economic recession, and heightened awareness about social injustice, 2020 presented no shortage of urgent health and social challenges that required immediate responses based on emerging data and research. In this episode of On the Evidence, Mathematica’s Adam Coyne, Jill Constantine, and Chris Trenholm reflect on how Mathematica and its partners rose to meet those challenges.
Coyne, Constantine, and Trenholm are the general managers of Mathematica’s international, human services, and health business units, respectively. The episode features short interviews with each of them as they share some of Mathematica’s most memorable work from the past year. Each interview includes a preview of projects, initiatives, and likely themes in 2021.
We have a full list of resources mentioned on the episode on the Mathematica blog: https://bit.ly/3oIJxQV
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Dec 9, 2020
A One-Stop Shop for Information about State Approaches to COVID-19 Contact Tracing | Episode 49
In early spring, states were scrambling to learn from one another how to scale up contact tracing for COVID-19. Staff at Mathematica and the National Academy of State Health Policy (NASHP) recognized that states needed a single place to find accurate, up-to-date publicly available information about the decisions that other states were making in response to the pandemic.
To help states as they develop and refine their approaches to contact tracing, NASHP and Mathematica partnered to create and maintain a central repository that reflects publicly available information about how states approach this work. NASHP hosts an interactive map and table with detailed information about states’ approaches to COVID-19 contact tracing. It is the single most comprehensive resource for documenting the variation in states’ approaches to contact tracing for COVID-19 and updated on a regular basis. Mathematica hosts a supplementary web tool that provides contextual information about each state’s po…
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Nov 25, 2020
Maternal Health Care in India during and after the Pandemic | Episode 48
For more than two decades, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation supported evidence-based programs in India that promote reproductive health and rights. As the foundation phased out its grantmaking related to population and reproductive health, it partnered with Mathematica to conduct a cumulative review of its efforts to improve maternal health in India.
The foundation’s maternal health quality of care strategy in India sought to improve the trajectory of health for women, children, and their families. Although the country had already made considerable progress in expanding access to maternal health services and, in the process, driving down the national maternal mortality ratio, the foundation and its grantees sought to improve the quality of these services, which is seen as a contributing factor in the pregnancy-related deaths that still occur today.
Because the Mathematica report was published in late February, it summarizes the state of maternal health in India up…
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Nov 11, 2020
Investing in Education for Success in the Long Run | Episode 47
In his research, Kirabo Jackson, an economist at Northwestern University, has explored the causal relationship between school spending and student outcomes. His work has also shed light on the role that teachers and schools play in helping students acquire skills and succeed in the long run.
Jackson is the 20th winner of the David N. Kershaw Award and Prize, established to recognize young professionals under the age of 40 who have made distinguished contributions to the field of public policy. David Kershaw, for whom the award is named, was a founder and the first president of Mathematica. In the spring of 1979, he helped guide the establishment of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) and Mathematica’s principal role within it, before his death from cancer later that year at the age of 37. The award in his memory was created in 1983 and has since been jointly administered by Mathematica and APPAM. The award is presented every other year at the APPAM Fall…
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Oct 28, 2020
On the Need to Build and Diversify the Teacher Pipeline | Episode 46
For about a decade, the national supply of teachers has steadily declined, a trend that is expected to continue even as the demand for new teachers is projected to increase. Not only do schools and school districts need enough teachers, but they want to recruit and retain effective teachers. Because evidence suggests that students of color benefit academically from having a teacher who shares their racial or ethnic identity, increasing the number of effective teachers likely means, among other things, that schools will need to increase the number Black, Latinx, and other teachers of color.
For this episode of On the Evidence, guests Sharif El-Mekki and Jill Constantine talk about the current challenges with recruiting and retaining teachers, especially Black male teachers, and what evidence-based practices may help.
El-Mekki is a former teacher and principal in Philadelphia and currently the chief executive officer of the Center for Black Educator Development, a nonprofit focused on…
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Oct 14, 2020
How to Reopen Schools Safely and With Minimal Disruptions | Episode 45
In mid-September, researchers from Mathematica partnered with the Pennsylvania Department of Education to run 400,000 simulations intended to inform school operating and closure strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic. The simulations predict the level of spread of COVID-19 infection in schools, taking into account a range of factors. These factors include school type and size, the community infection rate, school mask policies and other precautions, in-person opening strategies, and potential school responses to detected infections.
For this episode of On the Evidence, guests Adam Schott and Brian Gill discuss the results and implications of these simulations. Schott is the special assistant to the secretary at the Pennsylvania Department of Education. Gill is a senior fellow at Mathematica and one of the researchers who coauthored the report about the simulations.
Find a short summary of the top-line findings here: https://bit.ly/318rVEh
Read the full report discussed in this epis…
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Oct 7, 2020
Lessons from COVID-19 Impacts on Connecticut's Long-Term Care Facilities | Episode 44
The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected people in long-term care settings, who only make up about 1 percent of the U.S. population but represented more than 40 percent of all COVID-19 deaths in the United States in September. In Connecticut, that disproportionate impact was even more severe: as of July 30, about 72 percent of the state’s COVID-19-related deaths were among long-term care residents.
On this episode of On the Evidence, guests Patricia Rowan and Debra Lipson of Mathematica discuss their independent assessment of COVID-19’s impacts on nursing homes and assisted living facilities in Connecticut. Their final report, which published on Sept. 30, includes findings on why the pandemic was so devastating in the state’s long-term care facilities earlier in the year. It also recommends steps that the state and the long-term care industry can take to prepare for a potential second wave of COVID-19 infections and for future infectious disease outbreaks. Although…
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Sep 16, 2020
Blending Performance Measurement and Program Evaluation in Government | Episode 43
Although performance measurement and program evaluation are both ostensibly about assessing the effectiveness of government, they have historically meant different things in terms of what gets assessed and who does the assessing. Performance measurement is more commonly associated with ongoing monitoring and reporting of program accomplishments and is typically conducted by program or agency staff. Program evaluation, on the other hand, is more commonly associated with periodic or ad hoc studies conducted by experts outside of an agency or program.
But are those distinctions still relevant today? That’s one of the questions journalists Katherine Barrett and Richard Greene discuss in their new book, The Promises and Pitfalls of Performance-Informed Management.
In this episode of On the Evidence, Barrett and Greene talk about how state and local governments use performance measurement and program evaluation to inform management decisions, providing contemporary case studies along wit…
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Sep 2, 2020
Early Lessons for Effective and Equitable Contact Tracing | Episode 42
As states and counties grapple with containing the spread of COVID-19, they have learned that the virus places novel demands on contact tracing efforts. Early experiences from states with contact tracing programs suggest that a successful contact tracing program needs to account for the economic circumstances of people infected, as well as their families; it needs to account for the emotional and psychological ramifications of learning you and your loved ones are at risk of infection; it also needs to account for contextual and community factors, such as trust in government, household members' immigration status, language, and culture, that could be barriers to reaching the very populations most at-risk of contracting the disease.
On this episode of On the Evidence, four guests discuss emerging lessons from states and localities on conducting effective and equitable contact tracing for COVID-19. This episode is an abridged and edited version of a webinar hosted by Mathematica on Aug.…
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Aug 19, 2020
Examining Racial Disparities in School Discipline and Mental Health Care | Episode 41
Sarah Lieff wants to know if the Medicaid expansion, which made mental health services more affordable to low-income Americans in many states, resulted in greater access and improved quality of mental health treatment for those who need it. Rachel Perera is interested in the effects of investigations for civil rights violations related to racial discrimination in school discipline.
Both Lieff and Perera are continuing their doctoral research as Mathematica summer fellows. For this episode of On the Evidence, Lieff and Perera discuss the questions they’re pursuing for the fellowship, what they find appealing about applied research, and how the field they’re entering can help reduce racial disparities in both mental health care and education.
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Jul 29, 2020
Two Lifelong Friends Explore Their Shared Past and Racial Differences | Episode 40
In early June, as communities across the country organized protests against racism in all its forms, Mathematica released a statement denouncing social injustice and affirming that black lives matter. This episode provides insight behind why Mathematica's CEO wanted to make that statement. It's also about how the events in late May and early June prompted two lifelong friends to talk about race in ways they hadn’t before.
The guests for this episode are Paul Decker and Chris Williams. Decker is the president and CEO of Mathematica. Williams is the founder of OnPacePlus and the chief of ophthalmology at Crozer-Chester Medical Center in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Paul is white. Chris is Black. They grew up together in Jacksonville, Illinois. For this episode, Decker and Williams are interviewing each other.
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Jul 15, 2020
A Better Pathway for Transition-Age Youth with Disabilities | Episode 39
This episode focuses on young people between the ages of 14 and 24 who have disabilities and must navigate a complex bureaucracy to access benefits and support services. Our guests are Dave Wittenburg and Kim Kaiser. Wittenburg, who is the disability area director at Mathematica, has an expertise in interventions to promote employment for people with disabilities, particularly interventions that serve youth as they transition into adulthood. Kaiser is an autism advocate, a certified peer support specialist, and the parent of a teenage son on the spectrum. She is also a parent advisor for the nonprofit, Families Together in New York State, and a program director for the Color of Autism, a foundation committed to serving African Americans who are affected by Autism Spectrum Disorders.
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Jul 1, 2020
Health Policy Research, Racism, and a Pandemic | Episode 38
Before March 2020, a search for the keyword “coronavirus” would have turned up zero results on Mathematica’s website. Now the word and its sibling, COVID-19, appear in more than two dozen pages about contact tracing, wastewater testing, disease modeling, workforce planning, and more.
Owing to the wide-ranging effects of the novel coronavirus, Mathematica’s experts have sprung into action to understand its implications for primary care, child protective services, behavioral health, remote learning in K-12 education, surging unemployment among workers with disabilities, and food insecurity among children who no longer have access to daily school meals. Although the pandemic is touching almost every conceivable area of public wellbeing, it started as a public health threat and has galvanized Mathematica’s nearly 600 health care and policy experts, researchers, technologists, data scientists, clinicians, survey experts, and program design and management experts to apply their sk…
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Jun 19, 2020
Addressing Structural Racism in Policy Research | Episode 37
In early 2019, the Urban Institute published a brief about addressing structural racism through research and policy analysis. The paper summarizes lessons, promising practices, and recommendations previously discussed in a roundtable with 23 research groups. At the time of publication, the paper’s authors did not know that communities across the country would soon be organizing protests against structural racism in the wake of a recent string of high-profile incidents in which people of color were killed by law enforcement, occurring during a pandemic that disproportionately harms Black and Latinx Americans.
Nevertheless, the brief might find new readers in the policy research field who—amid heightened awareness brought about by recent acts of social injustice—have committed to addressing structural racism and are looking for concrete steps they can take. The paper discusses the relationship between institutional choices made by organizations that conduct public policy research…
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Jun 11, 2020
Telehealth Transformation Under COVID-19 and the Implications for Equitable Care | Episode 36
In March, the COVID-19 pandemic forced organizations in the United States to adopt virtual and remote work wherever possible. This was especially true in health care, with hospitals and physician practices needing to clear their waiting rooms and minimize the risk of infections for patients and providers. As a result, Congress and the federal government removed many of the regulatory barriers—at least temporarily—that prevented patients from receiving care through video chats and phone calls.
The latest episode of On the Evidence features a discussion about the rise of telehealth as an alternative to in-person care during the pandemic. Our guests for this episode are Mathematica’s Llew Brown and Diane Rittenhouse as well as Mei Wa Kwong of the Center for Connected Health Policy.
In this episode, we discuss the rapid regulatory, policy, and implementation changes taking place in telehealth, what research has found about the effects of using telehealth, and what the rise of teleh…
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May 13, 2020
Oakland’s Life Coaching Strategy to Address Youth Violence | Episode 35
On this episode of On the Evidence, we discuss life coaching, a violence reduction strategy being used by the city of Oakland, California, to help young people who have been involved with the juvenile justice system. Mathematica studied youth life coaching as part of a larger evaluation of Oakland Unite, a city initiative that supports community-based violence prevention programs.
We interviewed the following guests:
Peter Kim, manager of Oakland Unite
Naihobe Gonzalez, senior researcher at Mathematica
Kentrell Killens, a former life coach with Oakland Unite
Anayeli Vega Gonzalez, a participant in the life coaching program
Another life coach participant who preferred not to share his name
Learn more about Mathematica's evaluation of Oakland Unite here: http://ow.ly/vfdn50zFmQ7
Read a blog based on this episode here: http://ow.ly/6nm150zEW9b
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Apr 29, 2020
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Era of COVID-19 | Episode 34
It’s increasingly clear that although the novel 2019 coronavirus does not discriminate in who it infects, it does harm some groups of people more than others. The emerging evidence suggests that people who are Black, are 65 and older, or have certain conditions, such as diabetes or hypertension, are more likely to become severely ill from COVID-19. But income and occupation also play a role. The current pandemic has exposed inequities in society where, for example, segments of the workforce do not have health insurance, paid sick leave, the ability to work from home, or the ability to apply for unemployment benefits. For some, sheltering in place means a stressful, long-term inconvenience; for others, it means putting yourself at greater risk of domestic violence, or maybe choosing between losing paychecks or showing up in-person for jobs that put you and our loved ones at greater risk of being infected.
The guest for this episode of On the Evidence is Ralanda Nelson, who leads dive…
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Apr 8, 2020
Culturally Responsive Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic | Episode 33
As schools close in order to contain the spread of COVID-19, some students are in a better position to continue learning from home than others. Even when students aren’t grappling with the fallout of a pandemic, they face disparities in their educational experiences and opportunities due to their differences in family income, differences in racial, ethnic, or other important demographic characteristics, and differences in access to technology. Some state and local education leaders are proactively adopting culturally responsive practices to dismantle social and institutional barriers that inhibit student success.
For this episode of On the Evidence, a principal and an education researcher share insights from research and the field on implementing culturally responsive practices. Our guests are:
• George Guy, Jr., who has spent more than 20 years in education and currently serves as the principal of Rosa International Middle School in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Guy has also helped l…
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Mar 25, 2020
Can Algorithms Be Fair, Transparent, and Protect Children? | Episode 32
As technology improves organizations’ ability to collect, manage, and analyze data, it’s becoming easier to inform public policy decisions today in a range of areas, from health care to criminal justice, based on estimated risks in the future. On this episode of On the Evidence, I talk with three researchers who work with child welfare agencies in the United States to use algorithms—or, what they call predictive risk models—to inform decisions by case managers and their supervisors.
My guests are Rhema Vaithianathan, Emily Putnam-Hornstein, and Beth Weigensberg.
Vaithianathan is a professor of economics and director of the Centre for Social Data Analytics in the School of Social Sciences and Public Policy at Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand, and a professor of social data and analytics at the Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Queensland, Australia.
Putnam-Hornstein is an associate professor of social work at the University of Southern C…
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Mar 11, 2020
Building the Pipeline of Black Women in Economics | Episode 31
On this episode of On the Evidence, we check in with Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman and Fanta Traore a year after the group they co-founded, the Sadie Collective, held its inaugural conference about, for, and by black women in economics and related fields.
Find more information about the Sadie Collective here: https://www.sadiecollective.org/
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Feb 26, 2020
Customized Employment for Workers with Disabilities | Episode 30
Since the early 2000s, federal policy has encouraged customized employment strategies to help people with significant disabilities secure paid jobs. Through customized employment, the relationship between the job seeker and employer is personalized so that the needs of both are met through negotiation of the worker’s job duties and flexible work arrangements. About eight years ago, the nonprofit SourceAmerica launched a new program called Pathways to Careers that combined several types of customized employment strategies, such as an assessment of program participants’ strengths (called Discovery), paid internships and work experiences, and post-employment career support. Pathways started with a pilot site in Clearfield, Utah, and expanded to four other sites in Massachusetts; Michigan; Virginia; and Ogden, Utah.
Mathematica is conducting an evaluation of Pathways, which will be the focus of a webinar that Mathematica is hosting on March 11. On this episode of On the Evidence, Sha…
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Feb 12, 2020
Communicating About Your Policy Research | Episode 29
Today’s episode is about sharing and explaining policy research. After putting in the hours to collect the data, analyze the findings, and report on your results, how do you ensure that people outside of academia learn what you’ve found and understand why it matters?
My guests for this episode are economists Jennifer Doleac and Kosali Simon, who recently participated on a panel about interpreting and translating the relevance of policy research at a research conference hosted by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.
Jennifer is an associate professor of economics at Texas A&M University, the director of the Justice Tech Lab, and the host of the Probable Causation podcast (https://www.probablecausation.com/). She is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/jenniferdoleac.
Kosali is a professor at the Paul H. O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University Bloomington as well as the associate vice provost for health sciences at Indiana Univer…
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Jan 29, 2020
What the Next Generation of Policy Researchers Is Studying | Episode 28
Every summer, Mathematica welcomes a handful of doctoral students to spend 12 weeks at one of our nine office locations, working on an independent research project that intersects with one or more of Mathematica's focus areas. On this episode of On the Evidence, we feature six short interviews with the 2019 summer fellows about the research questions they pursued and what they have learned so far. In most cases, the fellows are joined by a mentor from Mathematica.
Find more information about Mathematica's summer fellowship program here: https://www.mathematica.org/career-opportunities/summer-fellowships
What factors influence individuals' long-term care decisions?
Guests: Selena Caldera, a doctoral student at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, and Julia Baller, a senior researcher at Mathematica (1:45 - 11:32)
If Medicaid is more generous in reimbursing for home and community based services, does it encourage more beneficiaries with disabilities t…
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Jan 8, 2020
Child Food Insecurity and Home Delivered Food Boxes | Episode 27
The federal government funds a variety of national nutrition programs to combat hunger among children and families, and yet roughly 37 million Americans were food insecure in 2018, and 6 million of them were children, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
In some parts of the country, food insecurity is made worse by a lack of accessible and affordable options. That is, if you live in a rural area with limited public transportation and no major supermarkets nearby, you may rely on smaller retailers with limited produce, higher prices, and lower quality food compared with a larger store that is farther away.
On this episode of On the Evidence, we talk about a demonstration supported by a federal grant that used home-delivered boxes packed with fruit, vegetables, and other shelf-stable foods selected by registered dieticians to address food insecurity among children in Chickasaw Nation territory in rural Oklahoma.
Our guest is Phil Gleason, a senior fellow at Mathema…
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Dec 20, 2019
What If the U.S. Mandated Paid Family Leave? | Episode 26
One of the ways that the United States is an outlier among high-income industrialized nations is that it does not have a national paid family leave program. Some U.S. states and cities, however, have enacted paid family leave, and more are on track to do so in the next few years.
For this episode of On the Evidence, we speak with Jeff Hayes, the program director of job quality and income security at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research and a scholar in residence at American University. Jeff recently presented findings about what would happen if the U.S. implemented a paid family leave law based on some recent policy proposals.
This episode is part of a series we recorded in Denver during the fall research conference hosted by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, better known by the acronym, APPAM.
Find more information on the paper Jeff presented at the conference, as well as other papers discussed in the same panel session, here: https://appam.confex.co…
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Dec 18, 2019
Soda Taxes in U.S. Cities | Episode 25
Since 2015, a handful of U.S. cities have begun taxing soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages. With funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, economists from Mathematica, the University of Iowa, and Cornell University studied the impacts of those taxes on purchases, consumption, prices, and product availability. The project was the first to publish results on changes in children's consumption in U.S. cities with a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages. It was also the first to publish results on impacts from Oakland's beverage tax.
For this episode of On the Evidence, we spoke with Dave Jones, an associate director in the health unit at Mathematica, and Dave Frisvold, an associate professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Iowa, about the project's findings on sweetened beverage taxes in Philadelphia, Oakland, Seattle, and San Francisco.
More information about their study is available here: https://www.mathematica.org/news/effects-of-sweetened-beverage-taxes-in…
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Dec 11, 2019
Low Cost Experiments in Local Government | Episode 24
On this episode of On the Evidence, we talk about using behavioral nudges and low-cost experiments in local government. Our guests are Brendan Babb, the chief innovation officer and innovation team director for the municipality of Anchorage, Alaska, and Emily Cardon, head of research for the Behavioral Insights Team (BIT) in North America.
To learn more about the case studies referenced in this episode, check out BIT's publications page (https://www.bi.team/our-work/publications/) and blog (https://www.bi.team/our-work/blog/). Cardon also mentions a forthcoming paper on reducing burnout among 911 dispatchers, which has since published. Find it here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336830004_Belonging_Affirmation_Reduces_Employee_Burnout_and_Resignations_in_Front_Line_Workers
This episode is part of a series produced by Mathematica in support of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) and its fall research conference. More episodes affiliated with AP…
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Nov 25, 2019
Indigenous Communities and Policy Research | Episode 23
On this episode of On the Evidence, we talk about policy research by, about, and for indigenous communities. Our guests are Cheryl Ellenwood, a PhD candidate in the School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Arizona, and Laura Evans, an associate professor at the University of Washington’s Evans School of Public Policy and Governance. We discuss efforts to build a community of policy researchers focused on issues important to indigenous communities, the need for more and better data on indigenous populations (collected in respectful ways), and the application of decolonization methodologies in policy research.
This episode is part of a series produced by Mathematica in support of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) and its fall research conference.
Summaries of the indigenous policy scholarship discussed at the conference are available here: https://appam.confex.com/appam/2019/webprogram/Session13239.html
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Nov 21, 2019
Nudging Students to Enroll in College | Episode 22
A growing body of research have found that small-scale behavioral nudge campaigns can get students to complete complex tasks, such as refiling for federal financial aid to attend college. But researchers don't yet know enough about why certain nudges have worked in the past or whether they would still work on a larger scale.
On this episode of On the Evidence, we talk with Jenna Kramer, an associate policy researcher at RAND Corporation, and Kelly Ochs Rosinger, an assistant professor in the Department of Education Policy Studies at The Pennsylvania State University, about efforts to use large-scale nudges to increase college and financial aid applications, increase college enrollment, and bolster college students' persistence in completing college.
This episode is part of a series produced by Mathematica in support of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) and its fall research conference.
Kramer and Rosinger participated in an APPAM panel about scaling n…
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Nov 19, 2019
Policy Labs: Research for State and Local Government | Episode 21
State and local governments often lack the capacity to clean, manage, and analyze administrative data that could be useful for achieving political and policy objectives. Some places have established policy labs to leverage researchers' skills to identify trends in the data, evaluate programs, and provide insights for improving public policies.
On this episode of On the Evidence, we talk about the policy lab model with Kristin Klopfenstein, director of the Colorado Evaluation and Action Lab, and Melissa Wavelet, a senior fellow at MDRC and the former director of the Office of Performance and Strategic Outcomes at the Colorado Department of Human Services.
This episode is part of a series produced by Mathematica in support of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) and its fall research conference. Klopfenstein and Wavelett participated in an APPAM panel about policy labs.
More information about the lab is available at: https://coloradolab.org/
More informat…
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Nov 9, 2019
Opioid Use by Disability Insurance Applicants | Episode 20
Since 2007, the Social Security Administration has collected data on medication use among applicants for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). The administration can then use the medication data to identify opioid use among SSDI applicants. But the data set is so large and the data themselves are unstructured, with the majority of applicants reporting drug names in open-ended text fields, so the agency couldn't use the information to inform policy and programs.
On this episode of On the Evidence, we talk with April Yanyuan Wu, a researcher at Mathematica, who used supervised machine learning to uncover new insights based on those data, including an estimate on the prevalence of opioid use among SSDI applicants.
This episode is part of a series produced by Mathematica in support of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) and its fall research conference.
More information about April's research on opioids and SSDI applicants is available here: https://…
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Nov 8, 2019
Paid Leave and Labor Force Detachment | Episode 19
Paid leave can help mothers return to work in the year that a child is born, but what about the next few years? On this episode of On the Evidence, we talk about the effects of paid leave on maternal labor force detachment up to four years after a child is born with Kelly Jones, an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at American University and a senior research economist at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.
This episode is part of a series produced by Mathematica in support of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) and its fall research conference.
Find more about Jones' research, as well as other paid leave research presented at the 2019 APPAM conference, here: https://appam.confex.com/appam/2019/webprogram/Session13294.html
In the interview, Jones also mentions a second paper she was presenting at the conference on how abortion access affects educational outcomes. A summary of that paper is available here: https://appam.confex.c…
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Nov 6, 2019
Engaging Diverse Perspectives in Policy Research | Episode 18
For this episode of On the Evidence, my guests are Maria Cancian, the president-elect of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) and the dean of the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University, and Matt Stagner, the current president of APPAM and a vice president at Mathematica. We talk about the theme of APPAM's fall research conference in Denver, which is “Rising to the Challenge: Engaging Diverse Perspectives on Issues and Evidence.”
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Oct 30, 2019
Embracing the Emotional Aspects of Policy Research | Episode 17
As social scientists set out to investigate public policy questions, it is vital that they take into account the history of issues and the way people’s emotions will shape interpretations and responses to research findings. That’s the message that Mathematica’s Matt Stagner hopes to convey in his presidential address at a fall research conference hosted by the Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management (APPAM) in Denver.
On the Evidence interviewed Stagner about his upcoming address, his work on child welfare, and his reflections on the field of public policy research. This interview is part of a series of episodes produced by Mathematica in support of the APPAM conference in November.
A Q&A blog featuring highlights from the conversation is also available on the Mathematica website: https://.mathematica-mpr.com/commentary/embracing-the-emotional-aspects-of-public-policy-research
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Oct 4, 2019
A Progress Report on States' Use of Data and Evidence | Episode 16
The nonprofit Results for America publishes an annual progress report documenting best and promising practices in how state governments use data and evidences in budget, policy, and management decisions to achieve better outcomes for their residents.
On this week's episode of On the Evidence, we talk with Jed Herrmann, vice president of state and federal policy implementation at Results for America, about the latest Invest in What Works State Standard of Excellence, released on Friday, Oct. 4.
Find the 2019 State Standard of Excellence here: 2019state.results4america.org
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Sep 25, 2019
The Relationship Between Changing Work Schedules, Child Care, and Child Well-Being | Episode 15
Our economy has always had jobs that fit outside the conventional 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, schedule, but with the rise of telework, on-demand scheduling apps, "irregular work," and the Gig Economy, more workers not only find themselves earning their paychecks in the early morning, at night or on weekends; but their hours may change on a frequent basis.
Finding safe and high quality child care that accommodates non-standard or changing work schedules is a familiar challenge for many workers, but a relatively new area of public policy research.
On this week's episode of On the Evidence, we talk about a report that looks at the complicated relationships between changing work schedules, the availability of child care for those schedules, and child well-being.
My guests are the co-authors of that report, Angela Rachidi and Rus Sykes, who conducted research on behalf of Mathematica and the American Public Human Services Association, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.…
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Sep 11, 2019
How Can We Help Workers with Medical Conditions Stay Employed? | Episode 14
Each year, more than two million workers leave the labor force, at least temporarily, because of an injury or illness that prevents them from working. Their absence from work takes a toll on the workers and their families, their employers, and the government programs they often rely on for income and other supports.
Some research suggests that if government programs could identify and assist workers early, the employees would be more likely to stay at work or return to work after a short absence.
On this week’s episode of On the Evidence, we take a deep dive into the topic of interventions for workers who have begun to miss work because of an injury or illness and are at risk of prolonged or even permanent exit from the labor force. Specifically, we discuss the need for providing assistance early—within the first several weeks of missing work—before the employee’s absence from work has become normalized. Our guests include:
• Annette Bourbonniere, a research associate at t…
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Aug 14, 2019
What Doctors Need to Fulfill the Promise of Electronic Health Records | Episode 13
A decade ago, the federal government pushed for the widespread adoption of electronic medical records. Now those records are here and they're ubiquitous, but the transition hasn't been smooth. On this week's episode of On the Evidence, we talk with two of Mathematica's in-house experts on electronic health records, Genna Cohen and Llew Brown. We discuss what the research says about challenges in adopting electronic health records, as well as what to do about them.
Find an edited Q&A blog featuring highlights from the conversation here: https://www.mathematica-mpr.com/commentary/what-doctors-need-to-fulfill-the-promise-of-electronic-health-records
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Jul 31, 2019
"Forever Chemicals" in Drinking Water and Their Potential Effects on Health | Episode 12
Forever chemicals, a nickname for polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) known for their durability, are a class of chemicals that sometimes appear in tap water but aren’t widely understood or subject to much federal regulation. What we do know is that these substances appear in items we encounter on a daily basis, such as Scotchgard and dental floss, and have been linked to a number of health problems. Recent research also suggests that these chemicals are becoming more common in tap water.
On this week's episode of On the Evidence, we speak with Cindy Hu, a data scientist at Mathematica, who studies how humans are exposed to and affected by this class of emerging contaminants in drinking water. We discuss the prevalence of these chemicals in our drinking water, as well as their health implications and ways to address them through public policy.
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Jul 17, 2019
Siloed, Incomplete and Neglected: The Trouble with State Administrative Data | Episode 11
At a time when private companies can mine online user data for new, sophisticated insights about their customers, public-sector agencies — particularly those charged with serving clients with low incomes and some of the most urgent needs — are struggling to keep up with their own data practices. Although public agencies collect reams of valuable information that could be used to improve residents’ health and well-being, they rarely have the ability to study, interpret, and use the data the same way many companies can.
About six years ago, the federal government funded a study to understand what is holding back state agencies in health and human services when it comes to collecting reliable data and using them to both improve the performance of agencies and the welfare of residents.
On this week's episode of On the Evidence, our guest is Beth Weigensberg, a senior researcher at Mathematica who helped conduct the research for that federal study and co-authored an article based on…
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Jun 19, 2019
Federal Efforts to Overhaul the Way We Pay for Primary Care, Explained | Episode 10
Earlier this year, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that it would invite medical practices to voluntarily participate in new payment models for primary care in the Medicare program. The initiative is called Primary Cares, and its goals are to reduce Medicare spending and improve both the quality of and access to primary care for Medicare beneficiaries—especially for those with complex, chronic conditions and serious illness. CMS officials believe that the new payment models could affect as many as 11 million Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries and an estimated one in four primary care practitioners.
In light of that announcement, I invited three primary care experts from Mathematica to explain the latest push by CMS to change primary care through new payment models. My guests are Jeffrey Ballou, Eugene Rich, and Julie Schilz, who have the combined experience and expertise of a health economist, a general internist, a medical practice leader, a register…
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Jun 5, 2019
It Shouldn’t Read Like a Crime Novel: Trying to Summarize Police Research | Episode 9
For researchers to influence policy, their work must ultimately reach people making or implementing policy, and yet a gap often exists between the two communities. Rebecca Neusteter witnessed this gap when she was the director of research, policy, and planning at the New York Police Department (NYPD). Peer-reviewed journals often published articles about policing—and even policing in New York City—but her office did not have subscriptions to those journals and lacked easy, affordable access to the articles. What was available—typically abstracts written for fellow researchers—too often wasn’t useful to people in the department. It seemed to Neusteter like a missed opportunity for relevant research to inform practitioners. Ultimately, that led her to publish a brief, nontechnical digest of recent police-related research that conveyed important takeaways to readers who were hungry for information to help them do their jobs better, but who lacked the time to find and read the fu…
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May 22, 2019
To Help Philadelphia’s Workforce, This Nonprofit Had to Take a Look at Itself First | Episode 8
A few years ago, staff at Philadelphia Works, the city’s Workforce Development Board, decided that they wanted an outsider’s perspective to assess their workforce system and to assist them with more effectively helping residents. They partnered with Mathematica to study and address issues keeping them from providing the most effective services in the most efficient way possible.
In this episode of On the Evidence, we take a look at early efforts to redesign and streamline the daily operations of the city’s workforce system, starting with a cash assistance program for work-ready adults called the Employment, Advancement and Retention Network (EARN). Our guests include two of the nonprofit’s staff members, Patricia Blumenauer, director of workforce operations, and Eric Morton, a program representative, as well as Annalisa Mastri, a senior researcher at Mathematica.
We also have a condensed Q&A version of the conversation available here: https://mathematica-mpr.com/commentary/to…
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May 8, 2019
Boston Invites Community to Set a 'Civic' Research Agenda | Episode 7
The Boston Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, a research and development lab for city hall, develops new and creative ways to provide better services for the city’s residents. About a year ago, the office published the first volume of its Civic Research Agenda. In some respects, the document follows the trend of federal agencies publishing learning or evidence-building agendas. But Boston’s Civic Research Agenda doesn’t look like a formal government document: it’s colorful, with large font, photos, and cartoon-like illustrations. The authors also use personal pronouns to make it clear that Boston’s “new urban mechanics” want to have a conversation with you, the reader. The language is strategic: they want to welcome you in as a participant in deciding what local public policy issues to address, what questions to ask about them, and how to answer them.
In this episode of On the Evidence, we discuss the Civic Research Agenda’s one year anniversary with three member…
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Apr 24, 2019
What Do We Know About Patients with High Costs and High Needs? | Episode 6
In this week’s episode of On the Evidence, we discuss a major question surrounding health care reform: What do we do about the small share of patients who represent a much larger share of overall health care use and costs? For this conversation, I brought in three guests from Mathematica’s deep bench of health care experts—Purvi Sevak, Ann O’Malley, and Dana Jean-Baptiste, who have each studied high-need, high-use patients and efforts to improve their care.
We also have a condensed Q&A version of the conversation available here: https://www.mathematica-mpr.com/commentary/podcast-on-patients-with-high-costs-and-high-needs
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Apr 9, 2019
The Case for Increasing the Number of Black Women in Economics | Episode 5
Black women are underrepresented in the field of economics, and for those who enter the profession, being one of a few can be lonely. On this episode of On the Evidence, host J.B. Wogan talks with Anna Opoku-Agyeman and Fanta Traore about the Sadie Collective, a group they helped form, which seeks to increase the number of black women in economics and is named after the first African American to earn a PhD in economics.
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Mar 27, 2019
Do Suspensions Affect Student Outcomes? | Episode 4
Almost seven years ago, the School District of Philadelphia revised its student discipline policy, instructing schools not to suspend students for certain types of nonviolent behavior, such as failing to follow classroom rules or making obscene gestures. To examine what happened after the school district made the change, Mathematica’s Johanna Lacoe teamed up with Matthew Steinberg, an education researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. What they found provides the strongest evidence to date that when students are suspended, their academic performance declines after the suspension. On this episode of On the Evidence, Lacoe discusses her school suspension research in Philadelphia and what it might mean for the future of school discipline.
We also have a condensed Q&A version of the conversation available here: https://www.mathematica-mpr.com/commentary/do-suspensions-affect-student-outcomes
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Mar 12, 2019
A How-to Guide on Using Evidence in City Policymaking | Episode 3
A growing number of cities are interested in using data and research in decision making. Kat Klosek, director of applied research at the Center for Government Excellence at Johns Hopkins University, talks about a free step-by-step guide she wrote for policymakers who want to incorporate data and evidence in their work.
We also have a condensed Q&A version of the conversation available here: https://www.mathematica-mpr.com/commentary/how-to-guide-on-using-evidence-in-city-policymaking
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Feb 26, 2019
How a County Engaged More Clients in Employment Assistance | Episode 2
Across Colorado, county agencies struggle to get residents on public assistance to attend work orientation sessions that are required for receiving benefits. Adams County staff studied the problem, piloted a solution and assessed the results. Jon McCay, part of Mathematica’s evidence-based technical assistance team, explains the process Adams County staff used to improve client engagement.
We also have a condensed Q&A version of the conversation available here: https://www.mathematica-mpr.com/commentary/how-a-county-agency-engaged-more-clients-in-its-employment-assistance-program
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Feb 11, 2019
What If More Local Governments Invested in Outcomes? | Episode 1
On this episode of On the Evidence, Andrew Kleine, the former budget director of Baltimore City, talks about his new book, “City on the Line,” his account of what happened when Baltimore adopted an evidence-based approach to its budget process. Mathematica’s J.B. Wogan and Matt Stagner interviewed Kleine for the episode. Topics discussed on the episode: Outcome Budgeting, Logic Model Budgeting, Pay-for-Success Financing, and Collective Impact.
We also have a condensed Q&A version of the conversation available here: https://www.mathematica-mpr.com/commentary/what-if-more-local-governments-invested-in-outcomes
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Feb 6, 2019
Mathematica Launches New Podcast: On the Evidence
The show will investigate and promote the use of data and evidence to address social challenges through conversations with pioneers in their fields.
Find condensed Q&As based on each episode here: https://www.mathematica-mpr.com/on-the-evidence-podcast
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Aug 28, 2018
White Paper Discussion of the Week
White Paper Discussion of the Week by MATHEMATICA
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Mar 26, 2018
A Meta-Analysis of 15 Within-Study-Comparisons | JPAM Featured Article
Chaplin et al. (2017) tests the efficacy of regression discontinuity (RD) by comparing RD causal estimates at the treatment cutoff to those from Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) that are also estimated at this same cutoff. The study identifies 15 previously completed within-study-comparisons (WSCs) that explicitly examined this issue by assuming the RCT results are unbiased and then comparing them to RD results.
The differences between these results can be thought of as estimates of bias due to use of the RD method. The authors address the internal validity of RD by using the average estimated bias across all 15 WSCs. The study also addresses concerns about external validity by using meta-analystic methods to examine variation in estimated bias across studies. Existing theory predicts no difference between RD and RCT estimates on average, but difficulties with the implementation and analysis of RD in particular can lead to the possibility of deviations from theoretical expectations.
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Mar 7, 2018
Program Evaluation <3's Technology
Mark Lafferty and Dan Friend describe Mathematica's work evaluating social programs across the country, and discuss the tools we use to perform these high-quality evaluations at scale including Mathematica's RAPTER© system.
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Jan 30, 2018
Mel Podcast
Mel Podcast by MATHEMATICA
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Dec 4, 2017
Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning for International Development Programs
Experts from Mathematica, USAID, and the Rockefeller Foundation discuss how data and evidence can be used to drive decision making.
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Nov 30, 2017
The Negative Income Tax Experiments
The Negative Income Tax Experiments Presented by Chuck Metcalf, Retired Mathematica President and Chief Executive Officer
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May 25, 2017
Tools for Evidence Podcast Takes a Closer Look at RCT-YES and the RCE Coach
In the podcast, Associate Director Alex Resch and Senior Fellow Peter Schochet discuss and explain some key differences between RCT-YES and the RCE Coach . They discuss which tool is best matched to educators with varying levels of experience conducting evaluations, who might use these tools and how.
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Mar 7, 2017
How Does the Doctor-Patient Relationship Affect Decision Making?
In a new article for the Journal of Comparative Effectiveness Research, experts from Mathematica Policy Research reveal why some patients might reject physician recommendations even if they are grounded in good evidence. Listen to Mathematica researchers Cara Stepanczuk and Nyna Williams discuss this issue in this episode of the “Policy in Perspective” podcast.
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Feb 21, 2017
Innovations in care coordination and supports for people with disabilities
In this episode of Mathematica’s “Policy in Perspective” podcast, listen to Mathematica Senior Fellows, James Verdier and Carol Irvin, discuss policy challenges and innovations in providing coordinated care and community supports to people with disabilities and frail older adults. This work supports the contributions of Mathematica’s Center for Studying Disability Policy to the evidence on today’s most critical issues in disability policy.
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Nov 28, 2016
How Behavioral Insights Can Help Policymakers Improve Programs
Mathematica researcher, Irma Perez-Johnson, shares her experience using behavioral insights to improve public programs.
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Nov 13, 2016
Divorce and Women’s Retirement
Mathematica Senior Researcher Dana Rotz discusses a new study of how changes in marriage and divorce in the United States have affected employment and retirement for women.
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Nov 2, 2016
Who Has More Effective Teachers?
Mathematica senior researchers Eric Isenberg and Jeffrey Max discuss their findings from a new study that addresses a key question in education policy: do low-income students have equal access to effective teachers?
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Sep 26, 2016
America’s Investment in Health IT
In recognition of National Health IT Week, Mathematica Senior Fellow Emerita Marsha Gold and Senior Researcher Yael Harris explore the rollout and implementation of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, a major federal initiative to support the development and use of electronic health information technology to help reform care delivery and, ultimately, improve health outcomes.
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Apr 12, 2016
Reporting on Pathways to Health Coverage
More Americans now have access to publicly subsidized health coverage through expansions in Medicaid, the federal insurance marketplace, and state health insurance exchanges. But how much do we know about who is enrolling, how they are enrolling, and when? This podcast describes California’s experience reporting on the ways in which people obtain health insurance, offering lessons for other states that are launching comparable reporting efforts.
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Mar 26, 2016
The Changing Role of Public Health in a Post-ACA Era
In conjunction with National Public Health Week, Mathematica Senior Vice President and Director of Health Research Christopher Trenholm and Senior Fellow Judy Bigby discuss the changing role of public health programs in an era of health care reform.
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Mar 9, 2016
Delivering Good Data in Developing Countries
Mathematica Senior Researcher Kristen Velyvis and Senior Fellow Sarah Hughes discuss the challenges of collecting high quality data from resource-poor environments. They describe specific examples of potential data collection barriers and suggest approaches that can help mitigate these challenges at each stage of the survey process.
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Feb 21, 2016
Helping Accountable Care Organizations Learn from One Another
Researchers Sonya Streeter and Craig Schneider discuss Mathematica’s key role in a major effort in U.S. health care reform—the development of accountable care organizations, which are networks of providers designed to deliver more efficient, higher quality care for Medicare beneficiaries.
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Feb 3, 2016
Improving Health Care for Children: Lessons from the States
Mathematica Senior Fellow Henry Ireys and senior researchers Grace Anglin and Joe Zickafoose describe the CHIPRA Quality Demonstration Grant Program—the largest federal effort in the past decade to improve health care for children—and the lessons it offers for states and others that have a stake in providing quality care for children.
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Oct 3, 2015
Does the PARCC Test Succeed in Predicting College Outcomes?
A Mathematica report shows that students’ scores on the existing high school assessment in Massachusetts predict college performance as well as scores on a new test that was recently developed by a consortium of states to align with Common Core standards. Mathematic education policy experts Brian Gill and Ira Nichols-Barrer discuss the national implications of these findings.
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Sep 23, 2015
The Future of Family Caregiving
Mathematica Senior Fellow Debra Lipson examines the political and economic forces that have shaped policymaking on family caregiving over the past two decades and identifies key areas for potential progress.
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