Federal Policy Priorities For The Direct Care Workforce
PHI has released a report entitled, "Federal Policy Priorities for the Direct Care Workforce." The document offers an extensive and detailed set of federal policy recommendations for that portion of the workforce. Throughout the United States, millions of direct care workers—home care workers, residential care aides, and nursing assistants—ensure that older adults and patients with disabilities have the support they need across care settings. The report proposes federal policy recommendations to strengthen the direct care workforce across eight issue areas: financing, compensation, training, workforce interventions, data collection, direct care worker leadership, equity, and the public narrative. The report also offers nearly 50 concrete recommendations for the White House, Congress, and key federal departments and agencies. It includes recommendations for navigating and learning from COVID-19. The report can be obtained here.
Reducing The Impact Of Dementia In The United States
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) have released
a report detailing the path forward for the next 10 years of research on dementia in the behavioral and social sciences. The NASEM report recommends that research prioritize improving the lives of patients affected by dementia and of their caregivers; rectifying disparities; developing innovations that can improve quality of care and social supports; easing the economic costs of dementia; and pursuing advances in researchers’ ability to study the disease. The report also indicates that research will be most effective if it is coordinated to avoid redundant studies; ensures findings can be implemented in clinical and community settings; and takes policy and socio-economic implications into account throughout the course of a study. Funders of dementia-related research should incentivize these approaches and others in their guidelines for awarding research grants. The report can be obtained here.
The Future Of American Higher Education
The Director of the Georgetown University Center On Education And The Workforce offers his assessment of how the COVID crisis will result in long-term economic scarring of both individual students and postsecondary institutions in America. Viewed in the context of what might come next for postsecondary education, his sense is that COVID is just the beginning. As the pandemic subsides, it will open the way to demographic, economic, and policy changes that already were gaining momentum. He indicated that today’s postsecondary education and training system has become a new gearwheel, arguably the biggest gearwheel, in the American race and class inequality machine. The available evidence suggests that these two trends, the growing value of postsecondary education and its role in replicating race and class privilege, will continue and likely strengthen in the coming years. His views can be obtained here.
Can Health Organizations Improve Health Equity?
A report from the firm Deloitte addresses the question, “Can health care organizations move beyond lip service and take the steps needed to improve health equity?” The care patients receive and the outcomes they experience still can vary widely by race, age, income, ethnicity, gender, and even ZIP code. So, an issue worth exploring is whether health organizations can advance health equity. The report can be obtained here.