Age, Gender & Gender Identities

This brief summarizes an expert convening focused on the child support program’s current ability and future potential to help address child poverty.Key Findings

This Issue Brief examines the impact of Medicaid throughout its six decades and highlights the importance of Medicaid coverage for low-income children and adults. The brief reviews studies showing that access to Medicaid coverage is associated with a significant improvement in health and mortality.

This study represents findings from a descriptive analysis of a linked mother-child Medicaid claims dataset to examine the characteristics of pregnant women who use medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD) or intensive behavioral health treatment; additional analysis describes the mental health and neurodevelopment outcomes of their children at one year and three years.

The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH), in partnership with Mathematica, are conducting a comprehensive study to identify promising practices aimed at reducing disparities in COVID-19 vaccination and testing, and policy options to promote equitable, routine vaccination.

Key Points:

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a broad category of diseases affecting approximately half of American adults. Despite progress in treatment and management, CVD still has a large health, mortality, and economic burden. This report to Congress describes CVD and its adverse health outcomes, as well as certain risk factors and prevention and treatment options.

Nursing homes experienced unprecedented financial challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, raising concerns about a potential increase in nursing home closures.

Nursing homes have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. The purpose of this study was to examine whether there were racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic differences in COVID-19 infection and mortality rates at both the nursing home resident and nursing home facility levels. The study includes national data on COVID-19 outcomes for nursing home residents through the end of June 2021.

This report has been prepared by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH), Office on Women's Health (OWH) and the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) in concert with other HHS agencies within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). This report discusses activities and outcomes of HHS programs addressing the maternal health crisis.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) makes improvements to Medicare to increase accessibility and affordability of prescription drugs for Medicare enrollees, reduce the rate of growth in Medicare drug spending, and improve the financial sustainability of the Medicare program.