The Annual Disability Status Reports provide policy makers, disability advocates, reporters, and the public with a summary of the most recent demographic and economic statistics on the non-institutionalized population with disabilities. They contain information on the population size and disability prevalence for various demographic…

This two-phase evaluation documented the delivery and effectiveness of evidence-based health education methods by regular staff to pregnant smokers. During Phase 1, a total of 436 Medicaid patients were screened and 416 (95%) gave consent: 334 nonsmokers and 102 smokers. This historical Comparison (C) group was assessed to document the "normal"…

Objective: This study examined the prevalence and demographic and clinical correlates of children diagnosed with Tourette disorder, chronic motor or vocal tic disorder, and other tic disorders in public and private insurance plans over the course of a 1-year period. Method: Claims were reviewed of Medicaid (n = 10,247,827) and privately (n =…

Purpose: To identify racial/ethnic differences in retention of older adults at 3 levels of participation in a prospective observational study: telephone, in-home assessments, and home visits followed by blood draws. Design and Methods: A prospective study of 1,000 community-dwelling Medicare beneficiaries aged 65 years and older included a…

Introduction: Knowledge translation (KT) initiatives have the potential to improve prescribing quality and produce savings that exceed the cost of the KT program itself, including the cost of evaluation using pragmatic study methods. Our objective was to measure the impact and estimated savings resulting from the distribution of individualized…

Childhood disabilities entail a range of immediate and long-term economic costs that have important implications for the well-being of the child, the family, and society but that are difficult to measure. In an extensive research review, Mark Stabile and Sara Allin examine evidence about three kinds of costs--direct, out-of-pocket costs incurred…

The purpose of this pilot study was to determine the degree to which teachers' age, perceptions of fair pay, receipt of employer-sponsored health insurance, and administrative support, as operationalized by the Competing Values Framework, predicted antecedents of turnover. Teachers' thoughts of leaving their current job and commitment to a center…

Objective: Adoption of effective treatments for recurrent binge-eating disorders depends on the balance of costs and benefits. Using data from a recent randomized controlled trial, we conducted an incremental cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) of a cognitive-behavioral therapy guided self-help intervention (CBT-GSH) to treat recurrent binge eating…

Newborn screening is a test done on every child born in the US shortly after birth to detect diseases where, if not diagnosed and treated in the newborn period, the child will suffer significant trauma, disability or die. A few drops of blood from each baby's heel is put on a card and sent to the state's public health lab for testing. Most states…

The fiscal condition of states deteriorated dramatically over the last two years because of the depth and length of the economic downturn, and state officials do not expect this situation to improve any time soon. Previous downturns have proven that the worst budget years for a state are the two years after the national recession is declared over.…

Objective: Given the commonly held belief that physical examinations for child sexual abuse (CSA) are very distressing, our primary objective was to evaluate anxiety during these assessments using the Multidimensional Anxiety Score for Children (MASC-10). A second objective was to compare self-reported anxiety to parental report using the MASC-10…

Given the chorus of approval for primary care emanating from every party to the health reform debate, one might suppose that the future for primary physicians is bright. Yet this is far from certain. And when one looks to history and recognizes that primary care medicine has failed virtually every conceivable market test in recent years, its…

Background: As institutions for people with intellectual disabilities have been replaced with community services, health care provision has developed to provide assessment and treatment, low and medium secure units for people with challenging behaviour or mental health problems. These include both public and private sector provision. Little is…

Parents of children with long-term emotional or behavioral conditions often struggle to access and afford mental health services for their children. This article examines the parent-reported reasons for unmet mental health needs in children using the National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs, specifically investigating whether…

By addressing common reasons that schools and mental health partners often cannot sustain sufficient school-based mental health services, Connecting With Care (CWC)--a mental health collaboration that places full-time clinicians in schools in Boston's most under-served urban neighborhood--is demonstrating how schools and districts can leverage…