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Georgia Health Policy Center1
at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies
The Health Policy Center conducts research for the development of health care policy recommendations and implementation strategies for improving the health care delivery system in Georgia. Through studies, research and public debate, staff of the Health Policy Center and representatives from collaborating organizations assist in the formulation of health care policy. The 2000 projects of the Health Policy Center included the following subject areas: rural health, care at the end of life, children's health, health care for uninsured Georgians, and policy development, evaluation, and program implementation efforts with the Department of Community Health, Division of Medical Assistance. Several other initiatives are listed below under a general project category. James Ledbetter is the Director of the Health Policy Center.
In This Page
Projects
Networks for Rural Health. Karen Minyard. Networks for Rural Health is a state level program designed to: (1) assure rural residents of Georgia access to primary health care services in the communities in which they live; and (2) help rural health systems fully participate in networks and thrive as health care delivery becomes increasingly competitive. The Health Policy Center has assembled a team of rural health experts who provide tailored technical assistance, facilitation, mediation, and consultation to participating communities. Collectively, the team has expertise in community development, clinical medicine, hospital financing, strategic planning, economics, managed care, and organizational development. The program deliverables include working with 30 Georgia communities and five networks; developing financial, clinical, and governance leaders; charting health care dollar flows; profiling rural community health systems; providing education from program learnings; and participating in state level rural health system policy making. ($1,400,000)
Improving Care at the End of Life. James P. Cooney, Jr. and Glenn M. Landers. Improving care at the end of life (CEOL) is a topic that is taking on greater importance nationally and in Georgia, stimulated both by the aging of the American population and the increasing technological capacity of clinical care. There is an increasing recognition of the disconnect that exists between the care that people want and the care they receive.
The Health Policy Center continues to manage a statewide Collaborative on Improving Care at the End of Life and to develop experimental and evaluative efforts for care improvement. Support for these initiatives comes from the Georgia Coalition for Health, Inc., and the Joseph B. Whitehead Foundation.
Under the direction of James P. Cooney, Jr. and Glenn M Landers, the Center continued the evaluation of advance directive education components developed by Georgia Health Decisions and completed oral histories of the multiple community sites experimenting with end of life care education. The Center also completed its study with the Georgia Medical Care Foundation to develop quality intervention strategies for long-term care services. Partial and preliminary findings from that study are to be published in Long-Term Care Interface early next year.
The Center contracted with the Georgia Academy of Family Physicians in a three-year project to increase the competence of Georgia's family physicians in caring for patients at the end of life.
Continuing on the theme of improving physician education in end of life care, the Center is facilitating a conference including faculty and students from all four of the state's medical schools to strategically plan education improvements in the classroom and clinical education sites.
The Center also co-produced with the Georgia Collaborative to Improve End of Life Care and GPTV a two-hour special, Final Choices, which coincided with the PBS series, On Our Own Terms: Moyers on Dying. The program, viewed by almost 450,000 Georgians, presented the stories of local families as they dealt with the death of a loved one and provided viewers with practical advice on improving the end of life experiences for their family members.
In conjunction with Final Choices, the Center, on behalf of the Collaborative, launched a web site, www.gaeolcare.org, to assist in disseminating information about end of life care choices in Georgia and to provide people an opportunity to discuss their end of life issues and questions in a public forum. ($280,000)
Access to Health Care for Uninsured Georgians
Georgia's Health Care Safety Net. James P. Cooney, Jr. and Glenn M. Landers. At the invitation of the Department of Community Health, the Health Policy Center expanded its original studies of the state's health care safety net into a prototype information system for monitoring changes in service demand and financial viability. Included in this effort was a survey to determine the extent of support that county governments and local coalitions provide to health care in support of the uninsured and underinsured. ($47,500)
Options for the State's Uninsured and Underinsured. Georgia Health Policy Center Work Teams. Under contract to the Department of Community Health, all work teams from the Health Policy Center were presented with an opportunity to develop with the Department and outside consultants a variety of options for the state to manage its approximately 1.3 million citizens without health insurance. Final recommendations were approved by the Department's board and presented to the Governor in September for consideration in next year's budget cycle. ($66,750)
The Health Policy Center worked with other state agencies and organizations to sponsor a statewide meeting to help communities implement local initiatives to care for the uninsured entitled "Access Georgia: Implementing Local Initiatives to Assure Access to Healthcare for the Uninsured," Macon, Ga., April 10-11, 2000.
Health Care Central Georgia. Tina Anderson Smith and Karen Minyard. The MedCen Foundation, a community health foundation in Macon, Georgia contracted with the Policy Center to manage and facilitate the development of a regional initiative to improve access to care for the uninsured in seven (7) counties in central Georgia. Policy Center staff assisted Health Care Central Georgia (HCCG), a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation "Communities in Charge" Phase I grantee, in designing an enrollment-based program that addresses the needs of the most vulnerable of the uninsured: those with low incomes and high risk medical conditions. Based on the program's design, HCCG was awarded a Phase II RWJF grant of $750,000 over the next three years. HCCG will continue to contract with the Policy Center to provide ongoing technical assistance and outcome evaluation. ($46,900)
Projects Under a Multi-year Contract with the Georgia Department of Community Health's Division of Medical Assistance Related to Policy Development, Evaluation and Program Implementation
Improving Outreach and Community Participation in PeachCare for Kids and Medicaid. Mary Ann Phillips. Health Policy Center staff coordinated several programs related to increasing the enrollment of uninsured children in PeachCare for Kids and Medicaid. These programs included the development of a PeachCare for Kids informational video to be distributed to hospitals, health departments, and physician offices around the state, the monitoring and evaluation of a competitive process for issuing mini grants to community groups around the state to conduct outreach and enrollment activities, the preparation and revision of handbooks that explain Medicaid and PeachCare for Kids programs, and the coordination of outreach activities with other local, state and federal agencies. ($170,000)
Evaluating Georgia's Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Jennifer Edwards and Jay Bae. The Health Policy Center is evaluating Georgia's new health insurance program to serve low-income children, PeachCare for Kids. The evaluation assesses the program's effectiveness in achieving several goals: improved access to insurance, improved access to primary care, access to high quality health services, and better health outcomes. The evaluation includes original data collection through surveys of new enrollees and applicants; evaluation of health insurance claims data; and a process evaluation of the implementation of the program. Results will support policy and program development at DMA, and will also be reported to the Health Care Financing Administration to be combined with results of other state CHIP programs. ($197,000)
General Projects
Grant from the Agency for Health Care Quality and Research (AHQR) and the Packard Foundation. Jennifer Edwards. The Health Policy Center, in collaboration with faculty from Emory University and the University of Alabama at Birmingham were awarded a multi-year grant to study children's health insurance. The three-year study will examine the effect of the federal Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and changes and expansions in Medicaid in Alabama and Georgia on access to care. The study will focus on provider availability and low-income children's subsequent access to, utilization of, and satisfaction with health services. Two sub-studies, one on African-American children and one on children with special health care needs, will be undertaken. ($126,000)
Grant from the United Parcel Service Foundation. Jennifer Edwards and Lauren Waits. The Andrew Young School of Policy Studies received a two year grant from the United Parcel Service Foundation to explore the concept of establishing a children's policy research center that conducts academically sound research related to the issues facing Georgia's children. The program would contribute to the scientific knowledge about children and would have the potential of contributing to the policies that guide children's programs in Georgia. Working with legislators, state policymakers, and advocacy organizations, Health Policy Center staff identified four topics as important child-related issues: kinship care, early childhood education, dental access, and children with special health care needs. Before the start of the 2001 legislative session, the Health Policy Center distributed issue briefs to policymakers in the legislative and executive branches on these four topics. Staff are in the process of surveying superintendents of schools about school health programs, and will present findings in February. In the next year, research and policy agendas will be developed in additional areas, including children's mental health, juvenile justice, welfare, and others to be determined with the input of state leaders. ($125,000)
Philanthropic Collaborative for a Healthy Georgia. Jim Ledbetter, Mary Ann Phillips, and Vatsala Kapur Pathy. Representatives of the Georgia philanthropic and corporate foundation communities have joined forces to enhance the ability of foundations to identify, fund, and evaluate health grant-making opportunities throughout the state. The effort, currently projected for a two-year trial period, has become known as the Philanthropic Collaborative for a Healthy Georgia. The Health Policy Center has been asked to provide the administrative and technical home for the Collaborative. One of the exciting developments resulting from this foundation initiative is a Matching Grants Program. This program is in response to a challenge to the philanthropic community from Governor Barnes and the Department of Community Health to join the state in addressing several priority health care issues. As a means of building a partnership, the Department of Community Health has proposed a matching grants program that would provide state money to be used as a match for foundations and communities in responding to these needs. The first two priority areas for the Matching Grants Program relate to school health programs for low income children and rural health care access. The Health Policy Center, in its role as coordinator of the activities of the Philanthropic Collaborative will also serve as the liaison between the foundations and the Department of Community Health. ($700,000)
Publications
Newsletters prepared by the Georgia Health Policy Center:
Collaborative Communique, April and December 2000
Georgia Health Policy Center Report, December 2000
Why Provide Health Care to Children in Schools?, An Issue Paper, The Philanthropic Collaborative for a Healthy Georgia, September 2000
"A Blueprint for Rural Health System Development," Karen Minyard, Georgia Health Policy Center Working Paper, February, 2000.
1. For a complete listing of AYSPS Active Research Sponsored Grants from CY2000, see the Appendix: Report on External Funding, which can be found at the end of this annual report.
