May 2024
In This Issue
Health Policy in Action: Patient-Generated Health Data
Past Events: Advancing Whole-Person Health Care through North Carolina’s State Transformation Collaborative
Education: Welcoming Summer Interns

Monthly Highlights
Congratulations to the Class of 2024!

We are proud to see another wonderful class of students graduate, representing not only our educational programs but also a range of disciplines across Duke. The 2024 graduating class of Margolis Scholars truly embodied the program’s interdisciplinary nature with students from Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, Fuqua School of Business, Sanford School of Public Policy, School of Law, School of Nursing, and the Duke Global Health Institute.
This year’s commencement also marked an exciting milestone at Duke-Margolis: our first cohort of Health Policy Certificate students have now graduated! Nikhil Chaudhry (BS in Neuroscience and Global Health) and Natalie Lewis (BS in Environmental Sciences) are the first two students to complete the program since it was established by Duke-Margolis and Sanford in 2022. Both students graduated from the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, and Nikhil also was a Duke-Margolis Summer Experience intern and a Margolis Scholar.

We wish all our students the best in their future endeavors to advance health policy!

Health Policy in Action
Advancing Representative Enrollment in Clinical Trials

Duke-Margolis has released two white papers focused on enhancing the diversity of populations enrolled in clinical trials. In the first paper, "Fostering Collaboration to Advance Shared Goals for Representativeness in Clinical Trials," researchers propose three major goals to increase representativeness through collaborative action. The second paper, "Enhancing Representative Enrollment through Point-of-Care Trials," explores the potential of point-of-care trials as a tool to allow for greater patient enrollment.

Both papers build on discussions from Duke-Margolis events in March 2024 and July 2023.

Patient-Generated Health Data

Duke-Margolis also has released a white paper to evaluate whether patient-generated health data (PGHD) is fit-for-purpose and offer recommendations to support the development of medical products using PGHD. The paper features wearables, mobile apps, and direct-to-consumer genetic tests as particular examples of PGHD sources that need more evaluation and guidance to be effective tools. Read more here.


A Resource for International Real-World Evidence

Research Director Rachele Hendricks-Sturrup, Policy Research Associate Valerie Parker, Policy Research Assistant Maryam Nafie co-authored a guest column in The Evidence Base, to discuss the International Harmonization of Real-World Evidence (RWE) Standards Dashboard, a tool designed to bring together international RWE guidance and frameworks in one place. Read more here.
Disparities in Telehealth Use

Core Faculty member Gary Maslow and Duke-Margolis researchers Rushina Cholera, Yolande Pokam Tchuisseu, Samantha Repka, and Rebecca Whitaker co-authored a paper in Telemed J E Health to work explore the inequalities in telehealth use among North Carolina Medicaid members during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors found that race, ethnicity, and rurality were among the major factors contributing to these disparities in telehealth use. To learn more about this research and other deliverables, visit the project webpage.
Policy Impact
North Carolina's Healthy Opportunities Pilots

Over the last year, a Duke-Margolis project team has been hosting convenings around North Carolina and writing reports (in Health Affairs and Milbank Memorial Fund) to describe the impact and lessons learned from the Healthy Opportunities Pilots program. Research Director Will Bleser and Senior Policy Analyst Katie Huber brought the team’s findings to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Health Equity Conference. The session topic focused on using CMS 1115 waivers to advance health equity, with the Pilots as a key example—North Carolina implemented the program as part of their waiver in order to test and evaluate the impact of services to address unmet social needs. The state seeks to renew their waiver in the fall.
Short-Term Action for America's Health

Following a webinar that Duke-Margolis and the National Academy of Medicine recently hosted, Director Mark McClellan has co-authored a commentary in NAM Perspectives to identify the necessary steps to leverage health care, public health, social, and community resources to address emergent public health challenges.
Read it here.
Upcoming Events
ReVAMPing the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain: Implementing Policy to Prevent Drug Shortages

June 12, 2024 | 1 - 5 p.m. ET

The Duke-Margolis ReVAMP Drug Supply Chain Consortium will host a meeting to explore policy solutions that reduce the frequency and severity of drug shortages and improve the reliability of U.S. drug supply chains. The meeting will build on the ongoing work of the Consortium, and panel discussions will touch on legislative, administrative, non-governmental and private industry approaches that are underway or under consideration. Though this in-person venue has reached capacity, we invite you to attend virtually: learn more and register here.
Keeping Pharmacy Shelves Filled: Solutions to Address Drug Shortages 

June 25, 2024 | 8 - 10 a.m. ET

The National Union Building, 918 F St NW, Washington, DC

Hear from Mark McClellan during this event hosted by The Hill, where government leaders, supply chain experts, health care providers, and physicians will convene to discuss the pharmaceutical supply chain and the collective goal of preventing drug shortages.

Learn more and register here.

Past Events
Advancing Whole-Person Care through North Carolina's State Transformation Collaborative

Representatives from the North Carolina State Transformation Collaborative (NC STC), the NC Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS), and the private sector held an event to assess progress of the NC STC, a state-funded initiative to improve the health of North Carolinians. At the meeting, participants discussed strategies and actions needed to support the state’s commitment to enhancing health care access and quality through recent efforts like the Primary Care Payment Reform Taskforce, Medicaid Expansion, and the broader Medicaid transformation in the state. Watch the event recording here.

In preparation for the meeting, the NC STC also released an “Alignment Proposal for the North Carolina State Transformation Collaborative: A Pathway to Advance Whole-Person Care through Collective Action,” which outlines proposed next steps to further make progress toward better health care delivery in the short- and long-term.

Hea!thcare Innovation covered this event in the article, “N.C. State Transformation Collaborative Proposes Action Items.”
Education
Welcoming Summer Interns

We are excited to welcome our 2024 cohort for the Duke-Margolis Summer Experience Internship Program! This summer, we have 17 interns representing undergraduate and graduate programs from Duke and other universities across the country. Students will work closely with their faculty and research staff mentors in both Durham and DC on a range of research projects across the Institute’s health policy portfolio. The program will run through the end of July, when interns will present their final projects at the Summer Research Showcase (more information coming soon).
People
Rachele Hendricks-Sturrup spoke at two events:
  • ISPOR 2024 Conference: Rachele discussed opportunities to improve electronic health record data reliability and quality, and ways to use RWE to support learning health systems. 
  • Society for Clinical Trials Annual Meeting: Rachele’s session focused on assessment of real-world data for use in rare disease settings.
Axios quoted Senior Research Director Rob Saunders in the article, “CMS announces new decade-long primary care payment experiment,” which offered an overview of the CMS’ new Making Care Primary Model and what it means for providers.

Fortune quoted Core Faculty Member Courtney Van Houtven in an article that discussed the financial burden on retirees caring for elderly parents, a burden that continues to rise with the ageing population. Read Courtney’s insights here. 

Assistant Research Director Frank McStay moderated a panel at the thinc360 Conference that explored opportunities to modernize risk adjustment, including leveraging new data sources to update the Hierarchical Categorical Conditions model. 

Senior Research Director Marianne Hamilton Lopez spoke at two events:

Duke University’s Bass Connections published an article that quoted former Margolis Scholar Elaijah Lapay (’24). The story highlighted the Bass Connection team Elaijah was part of—Tracing the Roots of Nutrition Access, Implementation and Policy—and the work the team has been doing to address the challenge of food insecurity in Durham, North Carolina.

Team Member Welcome
Catie Armstrong joins the Duke-Margolis team as a Policy Analyst focused on health care delivery and payment reform. She holds a Master of Public Health from the UNC-Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health with a concentration in Health Equity, Social Justice, and Human Rights. Catie served as a Graduate Fellow with North Carolina Medicaid, where she supported state-level policy development and research activities, including extensive work on North Carolina's Section 1115 Demonstration Waiver Opportunity for Reentry Services. Prior to her time at Gillings, Catie helped lead the state's communications response to COVID-19 as a Public Information Officer with the NC Department of Health and Human Services. A lifelong North Carolinian, Catie also holds a Bachelor of Arts in Media and Journalism from UNC-Chapel Hill, with a second major in public policy and a minor in social and economic justice.

Opportunities at the Duke-Margolis Institute for Health Policy
Do you want to be part of health policy in action? Do you want to work on the leading health policy issues confronting cities, states, the nation, and the globe? The Duke-Margolis team is a dynamic, high impact national leader in leveraging policy to ensure high quality, affordable care for all. Multiple positions are currently available with new ones added frequently. Click here to view all of our career opportunities.

Submissions Welcome!
Interesting Project? Funding Opportunities? News and Events? 
Awards and Honors? Policy Impact? Op Eds? 
 
We're looking for ways to highlight your accomplishments and share information.
Email submissions to dukemargolis@duke.edu.