The United States spends more money on healthcare than other developed countries while experiencing significantly worse health outcomes, indicating a need to explore health drivers other than healthcare spending. While nonmedical barriers such as lack of adequate housing, education, and transportation are known to influence well-being, how spending that addresses these social needs affects health outcomes is less clear. This study will examine total government spending across both medical care and social service sectors to characterize the impact of such spending on health outcomes and disparities.

Adolescents and young adults often experience their first episode of psychosis as they are preparing to enter high school, college, or the workforce. The long-term implications of neglecting a future generation’s mental health can range from an overburdened welfare system to overcrowding in correctional facilities. Implementing an intervention for first episode psychosis via Coordinated Specialty Care (CSC), the OnTrackNY program aims to help patients maximize recovery, improve social function, and manage their psychiatric symptoms.

This study assesses the capacity of community social services organizations and their partners to meet the needs of new clients identified through emerging social determinants of health (SDOH) screening and referral tools used by medical providers during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a previous study, researchers developed a method for assessing the capacity of social service organizations to accommodate referrals from medical providers.

This study evaluates the effectiveness of an aligned service delivery and financing model designed to improve maternal and infant health by helping Medicaid-eligible persons receive access to healthy foods during pregnancy. The Nourishing Tomorrow (formerly Nourishing Beginnings) program uses integrated data, screening and referral systems combined with community health worker support to link people in need with healthy food delivery from a local food bank or with direct cash assistance for food purchases.

This study, funded as part of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Systems for Action research program, evaluates the feasibility of the Youth Wellness Hub as a hyper-local community governance model for integrating delivery and financing systems for youth behavioral health and wellness services. The Youth Wellness Hub combines three social policy tools that are separately promising or well-supported in the research literature: community governance; public health education campaigns; and service network coordination through fiscal blending.

Developmental studies support exploratory, pilot studies of a novel systems alignment approach. Developmental studies are awarded to researchers who have not previously completed a pilot study to examine the feasibility of implementing the approach and the feasibility of related research strategies...

This study, funded as part of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Systems for Action research program, will assess the feasibility and acceptability of an intervention designed to align medical, public health, and social service systems to support integrated, culturally responsive early childhood care for Latino and farmworker families residing in California’s northern coast in order to prevent and manage early childhood developmental delays and disabilities. The intervention is designed to disrupt systemic racism in early childhood systems that limits access to care for minority communities—including language inaccessibility, fragmented referrals, disinvestment in clinical infrastructure, and institutional distrust—by redesigning access points around trusted community infrastructure.

This study, funded as part of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Systems for Action research program, will assess the feasibility of implementing a community co-designed initiative that integrates health, social, public safety, and justice services under a single local government umbrella agency. The initiative focuses on improving the health, safety, and wellbeing of communities harmed by systemic racism and to reduce involvement in the criminal legal system.

Mandela Yoga Project, based in Cambridge, MA, offers an evidence-based group practice of mindful movement paired with breathing as an integrative health intervention to treat the racially traumatized nervous systems of people of color. Mandela Yoga is peer-led, which allows participants of color to...

Open Doors for Multicultural Families (ODMF) serves multicultural individuals with developmental and intellectual disabilities and their families in King and Pierce counties in the Seattle, WA region. Families they serve often struggle to navigate a broad network of services, opportunities and...