Phil Lee and Lew Butler founded IHPS as a non-partisan research organization focused on the nation’s most pressing health care issues. They also were each dedicated to creating a more equitable world, through using Medicare as an incentive to dismantle hospitals’ structural racism (Phil), leadership in the Peace Corps (Lew), and other work.
IHPS has carried forward this legacy in our research, policy engagement, and community engagement, across many important health and health care topics - supporting better health and health access in Black, Latinx, and Native American communities, improving access to behavioral health care for all, critically examining policies that negatively impact sexual and gender minority communities, documenting the impact of the social and economic safety net on health, advancing equity in care for older and disabled populations, and supporting workforce development so our health care workforce better represents the people they serve. This month we highlight some of this work - many more examples can be found on our website.
Joanne Spetz
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IHPS Focus On:
Health Equity
Many IHPS faculty are researching and working on policies related to health equity. Rita Hamad, MD, PhD is currently researching the effects of the child-tax credit on mental health in low-income communities. Hilary Seligman, MD, MAS is a leader in research focused on understanding the health implications of food insecurity. Liz Dzeng, PhD, MD, MPH 's work focuses on understanding and addressing the impacts of racism on hospital-based care. Christina Mangurian, MD, MAS's research program focuses on promoting mental health equity, particularly among underserved minority populations. Kim Rhoads, MD founded Umoja Health, which has achieved many successes, but its real potential is in how it centers community in public health - a model that promises to reduce incidences of cancers and chronic disease disproportionately impacting Black communities. Jack Turban, MD, MHS's research focuses on the ways in which public policies impact the mental health of transgender youth
Learn more about some of IHPS's current work to improve health and healthcare through addressing health equity. Read more
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California Labor Lab Webinar Series |
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The Home as Workplace
Eileen Boris, PhD
University of California Santa Barbara
Jan 25, 12 - 1 pm
Webinar registration link here
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IHPS Health Policy Grand Rounds
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Medicaid Policy During the Pandemic: A Ground-Up Perspective
Jamila Michener, PhD
Associate Professor; Senior Associate Dean of Public Engagement; Co-Director of the Cornell Center for Health Equity
Cornell University
Feb 15, 12 - 1 pm
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Sarah B. Garrett, PhD, is a medical and cultural sociologist. She works to promote health equity via stakeholder-informed mixed-methods research, focusing in particular on maternal health. She is core faculty at the Phillip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies (IHPS) at UCSF. Sarah is currently PI of a UCSF CTSI KL2 project, "Maternal health interventions in California hospitals: Understanding approaches & implementation to advance equity" (2022-2025). The overall objective of the proposed research is to elucidate how different health systems approach mitigating disparities in maternal health; to develop a survey to capture organizational influences on these mitigation efforts; and to develop a community-informed and community-accountable systems-change agenda for the next generation of equity interventions. A birth equity stakeholder advisory board (BIPOC community members, clinicians, scholars) will guide and advise the project.
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In the United States, Black women and birthing people are 3 to 4 times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women and birthing people, and they experience significantly higher rates of preeclampsia, preterm birth, and neonatal mortality. In recent years there has been increasing recognition of the roles racial bias, interpersonal racism, and structural racism play in the historic and current disparities in maternal health. Antibias training is increasingly identified as a strategy to reduce maternal health disparities. Evidence to guide this work is limited. In a recent Clinical Obstetrrics and Gynecology article, Sarah Garrett, PhD and colleagues share the results of their community-guided scoping review to characterize new antibias research. They found clear needs and opportunities for large national funding agencies to increase support for interventions that address the root causes of maternal health inequities, including systems of oppression, racism, and discrimination, and they should align interventions and policies with new evidence while centering the needs of Black women, birthing people, and others harmed by bias and racism in the health care system. Read more
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Claims-based measures of multimorbidity, which evaluate the presence of a defined list of diseases, are limited in their ability to predict future outcomes. Michael Steinman, MD, John Boscardin, PhD and colleagues share findings in a recent Journal of the American Geriatrics Society article of their evaluation of whether claims-based markers of disease severity could improve assessments of multimorbid burden. Their results showed that claims-based markers of disease severity did not improve the ability of multimorbidity indices to predict ADL decline, mortality, and hospitalizations. These findings do not indicate that disease severity is not important—any clinician knows otherwise. Thus, the task at hand is to develop better ways of accounting for disease severity using claims data and to apply them wisely, recognizing that disease-specific approaches may be more likely to bear fruit than broad-based, multi-disease approaches. Read more
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The adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) and digitization of health data over the past decade is ushering in the next generation of digital health tools that leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to improve varied aspects of health system performance. The decade ahead is therefore shaping up to be one in which digital health becomes even more at the forefront of health care delivery – demanding the time, attention, and resources of health care leaders and frontline staff, and becoming inextricably linked with all dimensions of health care delivery. In a recent Advanced Health Care Management article, Julia Adler-Milstein, PhD, A Jay Holmgren, PhD and colleagues detail the lessons learned from the first era of large-scale adoption of enterprise EHRs and ongoing challenges that organizations are wrestling with, and look ahead to the AI wave – the massive number of applications of AI to health care delivery, the expected benefits, the risks and challenges, and approaches that health systems can consider to realize the benefits while avoiding the risks. Read more
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In a recent Preventative Medicine Reports article, Pamela Ling, MD and colleagues shared findings from their study of flavored non-cigarette tobacco availability in brick-and-mortar vape shops in San Francisco (SF) and Alameda Counties, California (USA), comparing cities organized by flavored tobacco sales restriction policy. They found the availability of flavored e-cigarette liquids containing nicotine was lower in vape shops located in SF and Alameda County cities with versus
without flavored sales restrictions. Not prohibited by any policies, flavored e-cigarette liquids without nicotine, which can be combined with nicotine liquid sold separately, were widely available in nine out of ten jurisdictions studied. Comprehensive policies prohibiting sales of all flavored non-cigarette tobacco products will likely better discourage youth tobacco use. Read more
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IHPS faculty are responding to policy challenges raised by the
COVID-19 pandemic.
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Rita Hamad:
(MarketWatch)
Renee Hsia:
(The New York Times)
Hilary Seligman:
(Marketplace)
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Philip R. Lee Fellowship Fund Request |
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Since its founding 50 years ago, IHPS has been dedicated to training the next generation of leaders in interdisciplinary research to solve our most important health policy issues. In celebration of our anniversary and to honor our founders, Phil Lee and Lew Butler, we are establishing an endowment fund for the Philip R. Lee Fellowship. Please consider donating at our dedicated webpage!
The first PRL Fellow, Kim Rhoads (l), with Phil Lee (r)
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