Center in the News

In a precursor to the state’s current initiative, California experimented with a mix of housing assistance programs and social services through its “Whole Person Care” pilot program. Nadereh Pourat, of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, evaluated the program for the state concluding that local trials reduced emergency visits and hospitalizations, saving an average of $383 per Medi-Cal beneficiary per year — a meager amount compared with the program’s cost. Over five years, the state spent $3.6 billion serving about 250,000 patients enrolled in local experiments, Pourat said.

Miranda Dietz, a research and policy associate at UC Berkeley Labor Center, said the significant increase in the number of Californians with health insurance over the last two years would be in jeopardy without the federal subsidies. Dietz co-wrote a study in partnership with the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research that projects that as many as 1 million people will forgo insurance in California next year if federal subsidies expire.

The ACA “did close a lot of gaps” says Gerald Kominski, PhD, senior fellow at UCLA CHPR and research professor at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and Luskin School of Public Affairs. “But we still have upward of roughly 25 million Americans without health insurance, and no other industrial, high-income nation can say that such a large portion of the population remains outside’’ the system.

Two Medi-Cal long-term care programs designed to keep seniors and disabled adults out of nursing homes are serving only a fraction of the eligible population, a UCLA Center for Health Policy

The first step is the definition. The next step is utilization," said D. Imelda Padilla-Frausto, PhD, MPH, a research scientist at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, who helped craft the definition. "Research and evidence-based practices, or EBP, are primarily developed for English-speaking children and don't capture children speaking other languages and other cultures," explains Padilla-Frausto. "If that's how EBP are decided, are we capturing the needs of other groups?

Dr. Michael Rodriguez and Dr. Ninez Ponce of the Fielding School of Public Health at UCLA joined Midday Edition on Tuesday to talk about gun violence as a public health issue. Rodriguez has a good quote "there are more safety policies and regulations around teddy bears than there are for guns and keeping them safe in the home." "We need to look at guns as a consumer product that is dangerous, and when there's access to guns then there's a risk that someone will be injured, if not killed by that gun."

The UCLA Center for Health Policy Research said that for every 1,000 people enrolled in California's Whole Person Care pilot program, there were 45 fewer hospitalizations and 130 fewer ER visits when compared with a similar group of patients who were not in the program.

These statistics were among those presented at "Addressing Gun Violence as a Public Health Epidemic," a symposium held Feb. 13 by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. The half-day virtual symposium featured emerging research on various aspects of gun violence and discussions with leaders from national and local organizations advocating for policy change and public safety.

The California Health Interview Survey has revealed an elevated prevalence of diabetes at 11.5% in the country, above the 10% in the state. Physical inactivity, a contributor of diabetes, is a health issue for almost a third of residents.

“This is a stupid lie that apparently, like a zombie, refuses to die,” Gerald Kominski, a senior fellow and former director at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, wrote in an email. “The most common lie about this fact is that every COVID hospitalization (i.e., including on-Medicare) meant more payment (FALSE) and hospitals only got paid more if the patient died (FALSE)."