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Health Equity Population Health
July 2025 Justin Markowski,
Context: Community health centers (CHCs) are a critical and growing part of the health care safety net, doubling over the past 15 years to expand access to essential health care services to over 31 million patients in traditionally underserved communities. However, increasingly, CHCs have opened care delivery locations in communities already served by another CHC, potentially creating competitive markets with unknown implications for how this safety net operates. More
Population Health
July 2025 Corey Davis, Amy Lieberman, Czarina Behrends,
The United States continues to experience a nearly unprecedented level of drug-related health harms, with over 105,000 Americans dying of overdose in 2023 alone. Although overall overdose deaths declined slightly from 2022 to 2023, rates for Black people continued to rise. Stimulants such as cocaine and methamphetamine are increasingly involved in overdose deaths, and xylazine and other contaminants continue to be prevalent in the illicit drug supply. More
Commercial Determinants of Health
July 2025 Jennifer Lacy-Nichols, Hedeeyeh Baradar, Eric Crosbie, Katherine Cullerton,
nformation about lobbying is crucial to alert the public about undue influence in government decision making. Yet, government disclosures of lobbying activities are rare internationally and vary considerably in their completeness and accessibility. Building on a framework to measure lobbying transparency, this study benchmarked national government disclosures to understand what information was shared and to develop recommendations to strengthen political transparency. More
Health Equity
July 2025 Abhery Das, Michael Esposito, Tim A. Bruckner, Hedwig Lee,
The justice system incarcerates nearly 2.3 million individuals in the United States. Black Americans comprise 40% of those incarcerated despite representing less than 15% of the population. Theoretical work posits that mass incarceration can erode social capital by straining social and family networks as well as inducing carceral churn and coercive mobility within Black communities. Scholars report that greater incarceration may influence population-level health, specifically in communities of color. However, previous work does not address whether incarceration, as well as the racial disparity in incarceration, corresponds with psychiatric help seeking in the Black community. More
Health Equity Opioids
July 2025 Hannah L.F. Cooper, Anna L. Mullany, Snigdha Peddireddy, Simone Wien, Melvin "Doug" Livingston, Whitney S. Rice, Anne L. Dunlop, Michael R. Kramer, Madison Haiman, Lasha S. Clarke, Natalie D. Hernandez-Green, Angélica Meinhofer,
See all articles in the special issue, Mental Health and Substance Use Challenges Facing the United States: What Can State Policymakers… More
Health Equity Health Insurance
July 2025 Gabriela Plasencia, Kamaria Kaalund, Olurotimi Kukoyi, Viviana Martinez-Bianchi, Andrea Thoumi,
Populations that identify as Latino/a/e/x or Hispanic (herein referred to as Latine) in the United States continue to face disproportion-ate health… More
Mental health Opioids
July 2025 Noa Krawczyk, Hillary Samples,
The United States is facing an ongoing mental health and substance use crisis. In 2023, 58.7 million US adults had a past-year mental illness, 46.3 million had a substance use disorder (SUD), and 20.4 million had both. More
July 2025 Jerel M. Ezell, Sugy Choi,
Despite recent overall decreases in drug overdose deaths, racial disparities are persisting. This, coming against the backdrop of sweeping national opioid settlements, offers a reminder of the enduring potency of systemic racism in the face of what is otherwise a demonstrable public health success. More
Health Insurance Population Health
June 2025 Jamila Michener, Sarah E. Gollust,
Americans from across the political spectrum oppose cuts to Medicaid, believe that the program is effective, and are willing to take steps to defend Medicaid. More
Health care costs Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Policy State Health Policy
June 2025 Hannah Rahim, Aaron S. Kesselheim,
Prescription drug prices in the United States are substantially higher than in other high-income countries, with US prices reported to be an average of 2.78 times those of other countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.1 In response to these high prices, along with an opaque supply chain that can lead to substantial discrepancies in prices across different payors, states have passed drug price transparency laws that require manufacturers to disclose information on drug prices. More