Improving population health and health equity by connecting leaders with experience and sound evidence

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Improving population health and health equity by connecting leaders with experience and sound evidence

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The Latest from The Milbank Memorial Fund

  1. Rhode Island’s Health Care Affordability Standards: Lessons for Other States Seeking to Control Health Care Spending 

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  2. Covering Uninsured Children: State Solutions for Immigrant Children 

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  3. Opportunities for Rural Transformation: Regional Public Colleges and Universities

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  4. Can Civility Survive? Lessons from Legislators on the Firestorms of Politics

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  5. State Health Care Spending Growth Trends Point to Need for Policy Action

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  6. Proposed Changes to How Medicare Pays Can Help Primary Care’s Chronic Condition 

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Latest Milbank Quarterly Issue Released:  June 2025

  1. Early View Original Scholarship

    Policy Options for Antimicrobial Resistance: Exploring Lessons From Environmental Governance

    By:  Isaac Weldon Kathleen Liddell Kevin Outterson

    Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a pressing global health crisis rooted in complex collective action problems. Despite the urgency, policy responses have not kept pace with the escalating threat of drug resistance. By recognizing the similarities between AMR governance and other shared-resource challenges in environmental governance, this article examines potential strategies for AMR governance. More

  2. Early View Perspective

    Digital Health: An Opportunity to Advance Health Equity for People With Disabilities

    By:  Pankaj Jain Bhav Jain Rushabh Doshi Urvish Jain Henry Claypool Ariana Aboulafia Bonnielin K. Swenor

    Throughout the last 50 years, the disability rights movement has made significant progress in providing statutory protections for people with disabilities in the United States. More

  3. Early View From the Editor

    The Ongoing Assault on Science and Truth

    By:  Alan B. Cohen

    The Trump administration’s efforts to eliminate all manner of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices from government agencies, universities, and private sector workplaces has been coupled with steep funding cuts to key health agencies and the cancellation or freezing of medical research grants and contracts. It’s not just the careers of promising scientists and medical researchers that are at stake, but also the nation’s preeminent standing in the scientific community. Science unfortunately has become the latest victim in the culture wars taking place in the United States. More

  4. Original Scholarship

    Advancing Equity: Lean Leader Practices and a Path Forward

    By:  Dorothy Y. Hung LILLIAN C. LEVY Thomas G. Rundall ELINA REPONEN WILLIAM HUEN Stephen M. Shortell

    Lean management is a sociotechnical approach to quality improvement that aims for consistency in work processes and outcomes. This can be leveraged to reduce inequities by ensuring delivery of high-quality care to meet the needs of patients with diverse backgrounds. Despite recent efforts in the field, there is limited study on how managers implement health equity and workforce diversity goals as strategies to improve patient care. Given the important role of leadership in fostering workplace culture, we examined leader activities and specifically their use of lean management practices to support equity initiatives in health care. More

  5. Original Scholarship

    Measuring Primary Care Productivity in the Era of Interprofessional Team Care: Stakeholder, Scoping Review, and Implementation Perspectives

    By:  LISA V. RUBENSTEIN SYDNE J. NEWBERRY ISHITA GHAI ANEESA MOTALA IDAMAY CURTIS PAUL G. SHEKELLE TODD H. WAGNER L. DIEM TRAN STEPHEN D. FIHN KARIN M. NELSON

    Current primary care productivity measures do not account for investment in interprofessional primary care teams in relation to primary care goals and thus are insufficient for assessing and improving primary care efficiency and productivity. We explored alternative productivity measurement methods. More

  6. Perspective

    Changing the Story on Health and Racial Equity: Why Public Health Needs an Infrastructure for Building Narrative Power

    By:  LORI DORFMAN Sarah E. Gollust MAKANI THEMBA PRITPAL S. TAMBER Anthony Iton

    A growing body of scholarship and practice in public health attests to the importance of addressing differences in power as a fundamental determinant of health inequities. To pursue health equity, public health practitioners must move beyond identifying differences in health outcomes among populations (disparities) to articulating why those differences are unfair or unjust (inequities) and then identifying structures, such as laws, policies, practices, and norms, that advantage some and disadvantage others. More

The Milbank Quarterly Opinion

Chief Justice Roberts’ 2012 Ruling Should Undermine Work Requirements

No discernible difference exists between the ACA mandate penalty that was overturned by the US Supreme Court and the mandate penalty in the 2025 OBBBA.  More
John E. McDonough

John E. McDonough

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Nullifying the Affordable Care Act: What the Medicaid Work Requirement Really Is All About

Despite a mountain of evidence showing its deleterious effects, a Medicaid work requirement is now law. The mandate, considered by its supporters to be a centerpiece of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), is the product of a desperate search to find ways to help offset over $3 trillion in tax losses, coupled with the enduring desire among Affordable Care Act (ACA) opponents to repeal the Medicaid expansion for working-age adults.   More
Sara Rosenbaum

Sara Rosenbaum

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Medicaid Cuts Will Heighten the US Mental Health and Substance Use Crisis

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s cuts to Medicaid will heighten the nation’s behavioral health crisis. Nationally, each year an estimated 20 to 25% of children and adults have a mental illness1 and 17% of adults and 9% of adolescents have a substance use disorder.  More

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State Networks and Leadership Programs

  • Milbank State Leadership Network

    The Milbank State Leadership Network is a bipartisan group of state health policy leaders from both the executive and legislative branches.

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  • Emerging Leaders Program

    The Emerging Leaders Program seeks to develop practical, hands-on leadership skills in future senior executive and legislative officials.

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  • Milbank Fellows Program

    The Milbank Fellows Program is a leadership program for executive branch and senior legislative state government leaders committed to improving population health.

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