HEALTH POLICY IN ACTION

As the first COVID-19 vaccines received authorization for emergency use, the Center continued to urge for more widespread access to and better evidence and monitoring of antibody treatments to help curb suffering and potentially save the lives of Americans currently fighting the virus. In a suite of papers, the Center outlines steps to ensure that monoclonal antibodies are more widely available as well as needed payment models, improved evidence to augment the limited clinical trials conducted so far, and effective systems for allocating the limited supply. Read more about this work here.

Center Director Mark McClellan co-authored a Wall Street Journal op-ed with Scott Gottlieb that amplifies the Center’s antibody treatment policy work, “Why Are Covid Antibody Drugs Sitting on Shelves?” Read the commentary.

Duke-Margolis held a public webinar “Supporting COVID-19 Response and Health System Resilience: What Needs to Be Done Next” to identify strategies for three key areas important for tackling the pandemic—improving testing and surveillance, implementing vaccine distribution, and ensuring health system resilience. The webinar identified key policy decisions that the federal government and incoming administration will wrestle with as well as where states and the private sector will need to take action. Watch the webinar.

Visiting Policy Associate Katie Greene was a panelist on COVID-19 Vaccines: The Realities and Next Steps, co-hosted by the National Academy of Medicine and the American Public Health Association (APHA). Katie discussed vaccine allocation and distribution plans to overcome vaccine hesitancy, supply chain challenges, and communication plans. Watch the panel.

Mark McClellan joined the “Race to Value” podcast for a discussion of Post-Election Analysis and Implications for Value-Based Care and COVID Recovery. Listen to the podcast.

Deputy Director Marta Wosinska and Research Director Marianne Hamilton-Lopez presented at The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine “Workshop on Allocation of COVID-19 Monoclonal Antibody Therapies and Other Novel Therapeutics.” Click here to watch.

States, territories, cities and local governments are working diligently to distribute the first wave of newly authorized COVID-19 vaccines. Duke-Margolis, together with the National Governors Association and COVID Collaborative, analyzed states’ distribution plans and identified key issues, promising practices, and critical issues confronting states, including equity, data infrastructure, effective public communication strategies, allocation to critical populations and the need for additional federal funding. The Center launched an online resource of these state distribution plans. Learn more here.

Duke-Margolis is an active contributor to the COVID Collaborative, a coalition of nation’s leaders in public health, education, and the economy united with associations representing state and local leaders to end the COVID-19 pandemic. A bipartisan assembly of Governors issued support for the Collaborative’s Call to Action to Defeat COVID-19 and Promote National Recovery and Renewal. Read more in the Call to Action.

Duke-Margolis, together with the COVID Collaborative, Resolve to Save Lives, The Rockefeller Foundation, Johns Hopkins, American Public Health Association, and Trust for America’s Health issued Responding to the Winter COVID-19 Surge: What Governors Can Do, which recommends targeted action to prevent unchecked transmission, protect hospitals, and flatten the curve. Read the report.

Duke-Margolis is convening Governor Roy Cooper’s North Carolina Council on Health Care Coverage. The Council, which includes bipartisan members of the General Assembly and representatives from a variety of sectors, including business, nonprofit, and health care, is charged to review health care coverage in North Carolina, explore how to increase it, and develop a set of principles to guide policymakers in increasing coverage in the state. Center Director Mark McClellan leads the panel, which convened twice in December. Learn more about the Council and their discussions on December 4^th and again on December 18^th.

Core Faculty member Krishna Udayakumar released findings from a Global Health Innovation Center team analysis of publicly available data on COVID-19 vaccine advance purchases and manufacturing capacity to track the flow of procurement and better understand global equity challenges. Read more about the COVID Launch and Scale Speedometer here.

Core Faculty Members Osondu Ogbuoji and Gavin Yamey along with their Duke colleagues at the Center for Policy Impact in Global Health and the Duke Human Vaccine Institute published a paper entitled “Incentivizing wealthy nations to participate in COVID-19 vaccine Global Access Facility (COVAX): A game theory approach.” Read the paper here and listen to a public radio segment on PRI’s “The World” discussing the paper.

Health Equity Policy Fellow Andrea Thoumi shared her perspectives on the US relationship with WHO for an interview with Duke Global Health Institute. Read the full article here. Andrea was also a panelist on Racial Inequality and COVID-19: International Perspectives at the Commonwealth Fund’s 2020 Virtual International Symposium.

Advancing the use of real-world data (RWD) and real-world evidence (RWE) for regulatory decision-making requires robust and relevant endpoints that can address a research question about a medical product’s effectiveness in the real-world setting. Duke-Margolis hosted a public webinar of its Real-World Evidence Collaborative and its recent white paper that details a roadmap for developing real-world endpoints. Watch the webinar.

Duke-Margolis and the National Health Council have partnered to offer a virtual public training series Real-World Evidence (RWE) and Real World Data (RWD) and how both might impact patients and their care. Watch the December 4^th webinar on Sources of RWD: An Introduction to Patient Registries here. Watch the December 11^th webinar on Current Landscape of Patient-Generated Data and Data Privacy here.

RESEARCH

Duke-Margolis Core Faculty Member Yousuf Zafar, featured in Duke Daily, published an article exploring health care related crowd-funding entitled “Crowdfunded Cancer Care—A Reflection on Health Care Delivery in the US.” Read the full reflection here.

Core Faculty Member Aaron McKethan and Research Associate Hilary Campbell released a new research brief examining North Carolina hospital and ICU capacity. Read the latest update, “Available Hospital Capacity and ‘Runaway’ in North Carolina” here.

Managing Associate Rebecca Whitaker and Core Faculty member Nina Sperber published a paper exploring a new mathematical, cross-case method entitled “Coincidence analysis: a new method for causal inference in implementation science”.

Core Faculty Member Nathan Boucher and Anna Muthalay, a Duke Public Policy undergraduate, published a piece in the American Healthcare Journal, “Solving America’s Caregiving Crisis”. Read the full article here.

Affiliated Faculty Member Ryan McDevitt co-authored a paper entitled “How acquisitions affect firm behavior and performance: Evidence from the dialysis industry” for Microeconomic Insights. Read the full article here.

Brystana Kaufman, William Bleser, Robert Saunders, David Anderson, Courtney Van Houtven, David Muhlestein, Jeffrey Clough, and Mark McClellan co-authored the publication, “Prospective or Retrospective ACO Attribution Matters for Seriously Ill Patients”. Read it here.

EDUCATION

The Margolis Scholars undergraduate 2021-2022 application is open through January 3, 2021. The program is for Duke University students that demonstrate a strong interest in and commitment to a career in health policy and management as well as leadership potential to improve health policy. For more information and to apply click here.

The Margolis Internship Program is accepting requests for Summer 2021 Mentors. If you are interested in mentoring an intern in the Margolis Internship Program, please fill out this form. This form will close Sunday, January 31, 2021.

Duke Margolis Scholar and MBA student Stephen Colvill, was a co-author on the Center paper, “Right Patient, Right Time, Right Place” and is acknowledged as a contributor in “Key Issues After Emergency Use Authorization.”

Duke Senior, Laura Benzig, was acknowledged for her work on the publication “Supporting an Equitable Distribution of COVID-19 Vaccines.”

Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy, under a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), is convening this public webinar to discuss the need for clinical research as well as scientific and ethical considerations for the inclusion of pregnant women in clinical trials. Click here for more information and to register.

Senior Policy Fellow Susan Dentzer hosted the inaugural edition of Optum’s new podcast, “Until It’s Fixed.” The discussion takes listeners on a journey to all corners of the health care system to understand better what’s working, what’s broken, and how stakeholders are working to bring needed change and navigate forward. Click here to listen or subscribe wherever podcasts are found.

Joy Eckert has taken on the role of Research Associate for the Biomedical Innovation team. In this role, Joy will continue to support the Center’s Real-World Collaborative and its cooperative agreements with Food and Drug Administration.

Research Director, Marianne Hamilton Lopez spoke at Health Canada’s webinar on “Strategies to support innovation to combat AMR: An international perspective.” She also presented a session called “The Consortium: Moving the Needle on Value Based Payments” at the Payer/Provider Engagement & Contracting Summit. Learn more here. 

Nicholas Harrison’s title is changed to Senior Policy Analyst, a role in which he'll continue to work closely with Adam Kroetsch and the Biomedical Innovation team.

Center Director Mark McClellan is a new advisor to FasterCures' New Global Surveillance Advisory Group / Mobilizing a Global Active Surveillance System for Emerging Pathogens, a center of the Milken Institute devoted to accelerating biomedical innovation. Read more: POLITICO, BusinessWire, and the Milken Institute.

Core Faculty Member Barak Richman co-authored an article in Harvard Business Review entitled “Give Employees Cash to Purchase Their Own Insurance.” Read the article here.

Christina Silcox is the Center’s new Digital Health Policy Fellow. In this role, Christina will examine issues concerning digital health across the Center’s research portfolio, furthering work in artificial intelligence, mHealth, and real-world data, and more deeply explore such topics as interoperability, telehealth, and digital therapeutics. Hear more from Christina on COVID-19 testing in the Wall Street Journal, WAMU, and MedPage Today.

Kirk Williamson has joined Duke-Margolis as a Senior Policy Analyst for the Medical Product Payment team in the DC office, working closely with Hemi Tewarson on the state portfolio.

Kirk comes to Duke-Margolis from the National Governors Association, where he served on the NGA’s Internal COVID-19 Task Force and also advised governors and their staff on a range of health policy priorities, including prescription drug access and affordability, infectious diseases, opioids and substance use disorders, and Medicaid.