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Georgia Health Policy Center1
at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies
Georgia Health Policy Center, established in 1995, provides evidence-based research, program development and policy guidance locally, statewide and nationally to improve health status at the community level.
The Center distills its qualitative and quantitative research findings to connect decision makers with the objective research and guidance needed to make informed decisions about health policy and programming.
Projects to date focus on some of the most complex policy issues facing healthcare today, including community and public health; public and private health insurance coverage; long-term care; child health; and community health systems development. Karen J. Minyard serves as director of the Center.
In This Section:
Community Health Systems Development
The Center’s Community Health Systems Development program focuses on helping communities build local capacity to increase access to primary care and improve the health status of their residents. The Center provides tailored, technical assistance to communities throughout Georgia and in 48 other states.
HRSA National Technical Assistance. Georgia Health Policy Center was awarded a contract by the Health Resources and Services Administration’s Office of Rural Health Policy to provide technical assistance to 141 community network and outreach grantees in 49 states. ($3,899,559 over three years)
Technical Assistance Institutes. Georgia Health Policy Center conducted two Community Health Systems Development Institutes in Arkansas. The Institutes provide peer learning and practical instruction on sustainability, resource acquisition, and capacity building — common challenges faced by many rural health networks. ($13,040)
Promotoras de Salud Evaluation, Northwest Georgia Healthcare Partnership. Georgia Health Policy Center conducted an evaluation of the rural health networks' Latina community lay health worker program. ($10,065)
Northern Sierra Rural Health Network Strategic Planning. Georgia Health Policy Center conducted an evaluation of the rural health network’s Latina community lay health worker program. ($14,675)
Community Health Works. Georgia Health Policy Center conducted an evaluation of Community Health Works, a multifaceted rural health network serving the un- and underinsured in central Georgia. ($73,545)
Delta Health Alliance. Georgia Health Policy Center was tapped by the Health Resources and Services Administration’s Office of Rural Health Policy to plan for and provide technical assistance to the Delta Health Alliance. Areas of focus include general administration, finance, accounting and project management, including grant award review. ($75,000)
Child Health and Well-Being
The Center aims to improve child outcomes and child and family policies in Georgia through applied policy analysis and research. Grants from public and private sources fund programs in the areas of school health, childhood obesity, and child well-being.
Childhood Obesity. Georgia Health Policy Center helped the Division of Public Health coordinate “Building Healthy Communities from the Ground Up Through Nutrition and Physical Activity,” a workshop offered in Timber Ridge and Dublin, Ga., May 5 and 12 respectively; tracked completion of the 2006 Georgia School Health Profiles Survey; and developed, designed and provided training on a toolkit for faith-based organizations to implement education, policy and environmental changes. ($173,963)
Building Strong Families. The Building Strong Families project is a program funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Association for Child and Family Services to learn whether well-designed interventions can help couples fulfill their aspirations for a healthy marriage and a strong family. The project tested interventions with low-income, unwed couples who are interested in marriage, beginning during pregnancy or around the time of their child’s birth. The programs were designed to help such couples strengthen their relationship, achieve a healthy marriage if that is the path they choose, and thus enhance child and family well-being. ($1,982,384)
Georgia’s Medically-Fragile Children. The Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta awarded a contract to the Georgia Health Policy Center to research the needs of some of Georgia’s most medically-fragile children, who, due to federal regulation, are no longer covered by TEFRA (i.e. Katie Beckett Waiver). ($50,000)
Nurse Home Visit Evaluation. Georgia Health Policy Center is under contract with the Georgia Division of Public Health to evaluate its Intensive Home Visiting Program Model. The model includes trained supervised Public Health (PH) nurses who will provide frequent and intense home visits with families of young children identified as at risk for abuse and neglect. ($317,162)
Community and Public Health
The Center works to fulfill its mission of improving health status at the community level by gathering, analyzing and disseminating information in a manner that fosters collaboration and innovation and builds trust and relationships with local, state and national, public and private agencies interested in improving health status.
Urban Safety Net. Georgia Health Policy Center studied seven metro-Atlanta counties to measure the demand on and capacity of the urban health care “safety net.” The study addresses the issue of shrinking access for those who face most significant barriers to health care and examines the health needs and safety net services in Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, Forsyth, Gwinnett, Clayton and Henry counties. The project is funded by a grant from the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Georgia through the Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta. Work began November 2005 and will continue through March 2008. ($200,000)
Certificate of Need. Georgia Health Policy Center was contracted by the State Commission on the Efficacy of the Certificate of Need (CON) Program to determine what effect, if any, CONs have on cost of care, quality of care, and hospitals’ ability to provide care for the uninsured. ($160,000)
Revision of the State Cancer Plan. Georgia Health Policy Center is working with the Georgia Cancer Coalition, the Division of Public Health, and more than 140 Georgia stakeholders, divided into five Work Groups, to revise the state’s current cancer plan. ($38,501)
Legislative Education Initiative. Georgia Health Policy Center was awarded a grant from the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation to enhance, over the next three years, its efforts to educate legislators about issues of health policy. ($540,000)
Southern Regional Health Consortium. Georgia Health Policy Center conducted research, facilitated strategic planning, and hosted researchers from the region to improve health care in eight of the most rural, medically underserved states in the country: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, East Texas and West Virginia. ($117,000)
Health Improvement Programs (HIP) Strategic Planning. Georgia Health Policy Center will develop a strategic plan or project plan that will allow the HIP office to function in a manner that is consistent with DCH mission, goals and priorities as they relate to eradicating health disparities among men, women, children, the elderly, uninsured and underinsured. ($35,004)
Policy Impact Council. Georgia Health Policy Center is contracted to provide evidence-based research and analysis to supplement the work conducted by the Policy Impact Council, Policy Planning and Compliance Group of the Department of Human Resources. ($49,000)
Georgia’s Rural Health Plan. Georgia Health Policy Center is coordinating the development of a State Rural Health Plan at the request of the Georgia State Office of Rural Health. Approximately 70 stakeholders will be involved in a three-month process to develop an inventory of what rural Georgia has accomplished in terms of health improvement and what is needed. Completion date for the plan is January 2007. ($43,000)
Castle Technologies. Georgia Health Policy Center is informing the design of a chronic disease management system for community health clinics. Thus far, the Center has completed a literature review on clinical guidelines for chronic disease management. ($18,000)
Oral Health. Georgia Health Policy Center provided claims data analysis for the Georgia Oral Health Prevention Program, Division of Public Health staff. ($48,154)
Cervical and Breast Cancer Analysis. Georgia Health Policy Center analyzed Medicaid claims data to complete studies concerning the impact of the Breast and Cervical Cancer Treatment Act on health outcomes for women with these cancers. ($15,000)
Public and Private Insurance Coverage
Georgia Health Policy Center helps shape how Georgia addresses the costs – both monetary and societal – of the uninsured. Private foundations and state and federal agencies invest in a wide-range of projects to examine the role of community initiatives in managing care for the uninsured, study health care coverage for young adults, develop a strategy for providing affordable health insurance in Georgia and evaluate existing services including Medicaid and PeachCare for Kids.
Medicaid. Georgia Health Policy Center managed a statewide project that included working with the Governor’s Office, key legislators, and more than 260 Medicaid stakeholders, including recipients, providers, advocacy groups and the business community, to inform Medicaid reform to improve the health of Georgians. ($198,450)
TroupCares. Georgia Health Policy Center worked with TroupCares, a group of citizens interested in improving access to care for the uninsured in Troup County. Focus Groups with uninsured residents and small business owners, analysis of hospital discharge data, and key informant interviews are informing the community’s plans to improve the health status of the uninsured. ($28,083)
State Planning Grant. Georgia Health Policy Center is providing technical assistance to three pilot planning communities — Northwest Georgia Healthcare Partnership, Coastal Medical Access Project, and Community Health Works — to continue their work developing multi-share plans aimed at reducing the number of working uninsured. ($388,500)
PeachCare for Kids Evaluation. Georgia Health Policy Center was contracted by the Department of Community Health to conduct the annual evaluation of Georgia's health insurance program to serve low-income children, PeachCare for Kids. The evaluation assessed 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. ($346,212)
State Coverage Initiatives: Modeling Premium Supports. Georgia Health Policy Center modeled the cost and policy impacts of instituting a private market premium support program with emphasis on its effect for the uninsured children and the working uninsured living in rural Georgia. ($314,216)
Long-Term Care and Aging
Georgia Health Policy Center is a respected voice on long-term care policy, program development and evaluation in Georgia. The program conducts sound, evidence-based research that contributes to the current body of knowledge on long-term care in the United States.
Aging Project. Georgia Health Policy Center is assisting the state Department of Aging Services in qualitative research (3,800 surveys and four site visits) to support the renewal of the state plan on aging, which allows the state to comply with the Older Americans Act, and to support the Community Care Services Program waiver renewal, which allows Georgia to offer Medicaid support outside of a nursing facility. ($83,729)
Peer Support for the Elderly. As part of the Georgia Department of Human Resources' overall Real Choices Systems Change Grant, Georgia Health Policy Center assisted the Department in identifying national models of peer support used to assist elderly individuals to transition from nursing facilities back into a community environment. The peer support model has proven to be successful in transitioning individuals with disabilities from institutions to the community, and it is thought that the model might be applicable to the aging community. ($35,000)
Venture Philanthropy and Grantmaking
Georgia Health Policy Center partners with public and private grant makers to leverage federal, state, local, and philanthropic resources to understand, prioritize, and structure investments in health issues.
School Health. Georgia Health Policy Center was awarded a grant from the Healthcare Georgia Foundation to enhance Georgia’s school health capacity and conduct research to inform Georgia’s foundations about best options for collaborative work to address overweight children in Georgia. ($125,000)
Georgia Youth Fitness Assessment. Funded by the Philanthropic Collaborative for a Healthy Georgia, the Georgia Youth Fitness Assessment will add dimension to all that is known about childhood obesity and provide decision makers with the information needed to measure progress in efforts to reduce the number of its overweight children. ($700,000)
School Nursing Study. Georgia Health Policy Center received a contract from the Healthcare Georgia Foundation to engage stakeholders in facilitated discussions to better understand Georgia’s school nursing issues and identify strategies to address the issues. ($10,000)
Glenn M. Landers, Understanding and Reducing the Number of Uninsured in Georgia, Issue Brief, March 2006.
Glenn M. Landers, Bernette Sherman, Mei Zhou, with William Custer and Pat Ketsche, Report of Data Analyses to the Georgia Commission on the Efficacy of the Certificate of Need Program, for the Georgia Commission on the Efficacy of the Certificate of Need Program, October 2006.
Glenn M. Landers, James Cooney, Mei Zhou, The Effect of Peer Support on Recidivism Rates for Mental Health Hospital Admissions and Crisis Stabilization Episodes, for the Georgia Real Choice Systems Change Grant, Georgia Department of Human Resources, September 2006.
Glenn M. Landers, Mei Zhou, 2004 Update to the Georgia Oral Health Prevention Program, for the Georgia Department of Human Resources, Division of Public Health, Oral Health Prevention Program, September 2006.
Glenn M. Landers, Karen J, Minyard, Chris Parker, Beverly Tyler, William Custer and Pat Ketsche Final Report to the Secretary on Georgia’s HRSA State Pilot Planning Grant for the Uninsured, for the Health Resources and Services Administration, September 2006.
Glenn M. Landers, Bernette Sherman, Mei Zhou, Daphanie Scandrick, An Assessment of Health Care Safety Net Services in Seven Metropolitan Atlanta Counties, for Kaiser Permanente Health Plan of Georgia, Inc. and the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta, Atlanta, Ga., June 2006.
Minyard, Karen J., Tina Smith, Marcia Brand, Charles Owens and Frank Selgrath. Triple-Layer Chess: An Analogy for Multi-Dimensional Health Policy Partnership, Partnership Perspectives. (2006)
Ketsche, Patricia, Angela Snyder, Mei Zhou, Kathleen Adams and Karen J. Minyard. “Discontinuity of Coverage for Medicaid and SCHIP Children at Transitional Birthdays.” Health Services Research: State-Level Health Service Delivery, Access, and Practice: Improving Research and Policy, revise and resubmit.
Smith, Tina, Karen J. Minyard, Chris Parker, and John Shoemaker. “From Theory to Practice: What Drives the Core Business of Public Health?” Journal of Public Health Management and Practice. (2007)
Mary Ann Phillips, on behalf of the Philanthropic Collaborative for a Healthy Georgia, Investment in School Health Makes a Difference: The Impact of School Health Matching Grants Initiative, March 2006.
Issue Brief: Understanding and Reducing the Number of Uninsured in Georgia, March 2006.
Working Papers
Ketsche, Patricia, Kathleen Adams and Karen J. Minyard. “Differential Care Experiences for S-Chip and Medicaid Enrolled Children: Demographic & Programmatic Determinants.”
Landers, Glenn M., Mei Zhou, Angela Snyder, and Amanda Phillips Martinez. “Comparing the Health Status and Health Care Utilization of Children in Georgia’s Foster Care System to Other Georgia Medicaid Children.”
Phillips, Mary Ann, Bernette Sherman, John Shoemaker, Mark Rivera, and Karen Minyard. “Involving Community-Based Organizations to Improve Medicaid/SCHIP Utilization,” Public Policies and Child Well-Being Conference, Stone Mountain, Georgia, 2006 SSRN Working Paper.
1. For a complete listing of AYSPS Active Research Sponsored Grants from CY2006, see the Appendix: Report on External Funding.
