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The Fund publishes The Milbank Quarterly, as well as reports, issues briefs, and case studies on topics important to health policy leaders.
The Milbank Memorial Fund is is a foundation that works to improve population health and health equity.
Alan B. Cohen,
The “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement has garnered polarized reactions, with praise among proponents for its core elements while also attracting its fair share of criticism. To be sure, there is much to be concerned about the movement, not the least of which is its disregard for scientific evidence that fails to align with its ideology about disease, wellness, and vaccination. More
Jennifer L. Pomeranz, Erika Hanson, Dariush Mozaffarian,
The United States is an outlier worldwide in its permissive regulatory landscape for direct-to-consumer (DTC) prescription drug promotion. Recent proposals to restrict DTC prescription drug advertising raise questions about potential challenges under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which protects commercial speech. More
T. Joseph Mattingly II, Madeline O'Neal,
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, enacted on July 4, 2025, established the first nationwide Medicaid work requirement, replacing prior state-specific Section 1115 demonstrations with a uniform federal standard More
Anthony Iton, PRITPAL S. TAMBER, Gina Massuda Barnett, Rachel Rubin, Adam Kader, Christina R. Welter, Elizabeth Fisher, Jennifer Ybarra, Pamela Agustin-Anguiano, Greg Bonett, Jeanne Ayers, Meredith Minkler,
Disparities in health often arise due to unfair or unjust social arrangements making them inequities. These social arrangements are codified through structures—laws, policies, regulations, practices, and norms. More
Ashley N. Gearhardt, Kelly D. Brownell, Allan M. Brandt,
Ultraprocessed foods (UPFs) now dominate the global food supply and are strongly associated with risks for heart disease, cancers, metabolic disease, diabetes, and obesity. UPFs are likely associated with rates of neurologic issues such as dementia and Parkinson’s disease and predict premature death. More
Guangyi Wang, Daniel F. Collin, Deborah Karasek, Rita Hamad,
In July 2021, to alleviate material hardship, Congress temporarily expanded the Child Tax Credit (CTC), one of the largest income transfer programs in the United States. Prior research has linked the expansion to improvements in material hardship, food insecurity, and parental mental health. This study is among the first to examine its association with child well-being. More
Daniel Baslock, Nari Yoo,
Inadequate descriptions of rurality limit comparisons across rural areas and can lead to overgeneralizations in health policy research. Single indicators of state-level rurality, such as rural population percentage or population density, are often used in isolation and fail to capture the multidimensional nature of rural character, obscuring important differences among states. More
Julianna Pacheco, Nicole Novak, Samantha Deragon, Stephanie Schmitt,
We broaden our understanding of community power by going beyond traditional measures of voting and voting rights. Our objectives are to (1) create county-level measures of community power that are more expansive than voting and (2) explore the descriptive and geographic patterns of community power. More
Michael O. Emerson, Lauren Anderson, Jecorey Arthur, Nancy Seay, Ted Smith,
The United States lags far behind other comparable nations on health indicators. To promote population health in cities, we argue for the right to Universal Basic Neighborhoods (UBN). More
Ilias Kyriopoulos, Dimitrios Minos, Sotiris Vandoros, Elias Mossialos,
While public health research has examined the macro-level and structural determinants of health, the link between corruption and population health remains underexplored. More
Emma Virginia Clark, Robyn Schafer, Rachel Lane Walden, Julie Blumenfeld, Carrie E. Neerland, Katie Page, Mavis N. Schorn, Sanjana Chimata, Heather M. Bradford,
The alarming rise in US maternal mortality and disparities in perinatal, sexual, and reproductive health outcomes underscores the urgent need for effective, equitable, and evidence-based models of care. Care provided by certified nurse-midwives (CNMs) and certified midwives (CMs) has played a critical role in addressing these disparities, yet a comprehensive synthesis of its impact across health care quality domains is lacking. More
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December 2025
