Health Affairs

David Colby, vice president of Research and Evaluation at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), has announced the lineup for RWJF’s Most Influential Research Articles of 2011. As it has done in past years, the foundation has listed 20 RWJF-funded articles across the broad spectrum of its program areas. The articles were selected based on [...]

The community development sector –a network of real estate developers, banks, city planners, and non-profit groups — has traditionally focused on promoting jobs, affordable housing and improved quality of life in low-income communities.  Now it is increasingly taking on the role of improving public health, and building healthier, more prosperous communities with nutritious food, clean [...]

Tomorrow, Tuesday, November 8, Health Affairs will release its November 2011 issue, “Linking Community Development & Health.”  The issue explores the connection between improving the health of populations and undertaking efforts to raise incomes, employment and overall economic activity in low-income communities.  In addition to the community health material, the issue features a number of [...]

Uwe Reinhardt will speak at the release event for the November issue of Health Affairs. Reinhardt, the James Madison Professor of Political Economy at Princeton University and the author of an article in the issue, will offer a presentation titled “An All-Payer System: Solution For The Alleged Cost-Shift.” The event will take place on Tuesday, [...]

On Tuesday, November 8, Health Affairs will release its November 2011 issue, “Linking Community Development & Health.”  The issue explores the connection between improving the health of populations and undertaking efforts to raise incomes, employment and overall economic activity in low-income communities. The issue builds on the work of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and [...]

In terms of both health and health care, America is an unequal nation. There are well-documented differences in health between whites and racial and ethnic minorities—for example, in life expectancy.  There are also demonstrable differences in health care provided to people of different races and ethnicities—for example, in screening rates for cancers. Despite these gaps, [...]

On Thursday, October 6, Health Affairs will hold a briefing to release its October 2011 issue, “Agenda For Fighting Disparities.”  The issue explores the relationship of social and economic determinants to health disparities; the role of specific environmental factors; disparities in the quality of health care delivered at hospitals; and other relevant topics. Health Affairs [...]

On Thursday, October 6, Health Affairs will hold a briefing to release its October 2011 issue, “Agenda For Fighting Disparities.”  The issue explores the relationship of social and economic determinants to health disparities; the role of specific environmental factors; disparities in the quality of health care delivered at hospitals; and other relevant topics. The overall [...]

Prevention is critical to reducing rates of chronic disease, premature death and disability, and controlling health care costs. This point has been made many times over by health care and health policy experts both in the United States and abroad. Unfortunately, our current health care system is not set up to incentivize prevention efforts and [...]

For those who assume that the next generation of Americans will live longer than their parents, a new “three-dimensional” method of forecasting vital health statistics shows how this may not prove to be the case. Most Americans enjoy better health today than in the past, with significant declines in death rates from the top three [...]

If you’re traveling over the long weekend, you’ll want to take along some reading material. While some might reach for a good novel by John Grisham or Dan Brown, the health policy blogs in this edition of the Health Wonk Review tackle equally compelling mysteries. Was the Medicare Trustees report really that gloomy? If Workers [...]

In the May Health Affairs issue, Sarah Vogel and Judy Roberts map out the disastrous history of the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the major legislation that regulates chemicals.  TSCA makes it difficult for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to restrict use of any of the 62,000 chemicals already in commerce.  It does not [...]

Health Affairs plans a thematic cluster for its November 2011 issue on the topic of community development and health. Manuscript submissions are due no later than July 5, 2011. Papers will be selected for the issue based on competitive review. The publication of this cluster is supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which in [...]

The predictable lead sentence in a recent New York Times story proclaimed not only the obvious — that the economic crisis in the U.S. reduced use of routine medical care – but observed that such cutbacks are much deeper here than in countries with universal health care systems. And the supposed culprit was the usual [...]

In 2001, the U.S. Surgeon General issued a warning that this country was facing an “obesity epidemic.” Since that time, there have been public policy responses from all levels of government. Yesterday Health Affairs released three studies about municipal responses, one from Los Angeles and two from New York. • Zoning For Health? The Year-Old Ban [...]

We are pleased to announce the “most-read” Health Affairs journal articles published in 2008. The number 1 article has topped 61,000 pageviews to date. The next two articles, which were published in September, analyzed the presidential candidates’ health plans. All articles below are open to all readers for the next 2 weeks—through January 28, 2009. [...]

As Jacob, one of the three Old Testament patriarchs, flees from his brother Esau, he stops for the night at Bethel, where he dreams of a ladder going from earth to heaven with the angels of God ascending and descending the ladder (Genesis 28:11-19). There is extensive biblical commentary on this dream and particularly on [...]

Editor’s Note: This is the fourth in a series of posts on health and health care disparities that Health Affairs Blog is publishing in conjunction with the new March/April issue of Health Affairs on Disparities: Expanding The Focus, published with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Brian Smedley, Richard Epstein, and Dora Hughes contributed earlier posts in the series, which [...]

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of posts on health and health care disparities that Health Affairs Blog is publishing in conjunction with the new March/April issue of Health Affairs on Disparities: Expanding The Focus, published with support from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The series will also feature posts from Richard [...]

Almost 17 percent of black children and 20.5 percent of Latino children in the United States live in “double jeopardy,” meaning that they live in both poor families and poor neighborhoods, according to research released today in the March/April issue of Health Affairs. In contrast, only 1.4 percent of white children live in double jeopardy. [...]