On the Evidence

Latest Episodes:

41 | Examining Racial Disparities in School Discipline and Mental Health Care Aug 19, 2020

Show notes

Sarah Lieff wants to know if the Medicaid expansion, which made mental health services more affordable to low-income Americans in many states, resulted in greater access and improved quality of mental health treatment for those who need it. Rachel Perera is interested in the effects of investigations for civil rights violations related to racial discrimination in school discipline. Both Lieff and Perera are continuing their doctoral research as Mathematica summer fellows. For this episode of On the Evidence, Lieff and Perera discuss the questions they’re pursuing for the fellowship, what they find appealing about applied research, and how the field they’re entering can help reduce racial disparities in both mental health care and education.

40 | Two Lifelong Friends Explore Their Shared Past and Racial Differences Jul 29, 2020

Show notes

In early June, as communities across the country organized protests against racism in all its forms, Mathematica released a statement denouncing social injustice and affirming that black lives matter. This episode provides insight behind why Mathematica's CEO wanted to make that statement. It's also about how the events in late May and early June prompted two lifelong friends to talk about race in ways they hadn’t before. The guests for this episode are Paul Decker and Chris Williams. Decker is the president and CEO of Mathematica. Williams is the founder of OnPacePlus and the chief of ophthalmology at Crozer-Chester Medical Center in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Paul is white. Chris is Black. They grew up together in Jacksonville, Illinois. For this episode, Decker and Williams are interviewing each other.

39 | A Better Pathway for Transition-Age Youth with Disabilities Jul 15, 2020

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This episode focuses on young people between the ages of 14 and 24 who have disabilities and must navigate a complex bureaucracy to access benefits and support services. Our guests are Dave Wittenburg and Kim Kaiser. Wittenburg, who is the disability area director at Mathematica, has an expertise in interventions to promote employment for people with disabilities, particularly interventions that serve youth as they transition into adulthood. Kaiser is an autism advocate, a certified peer support specialist, and the parent of a teenage son on the spectrum. She is also a parent advisor for the nonprofit, Families Together in New York State, and a program director for the Color of Autism, a foundation committed to serving African Americans who are affected by Autism Spectrum Disorders.

38 | Health Policy Research, Racism, and a Pandemic Jul 01, 2020

Show notes

Before March 2020, a search for the keyword “coronavirus” would have turned up zero results on Mathematica’s website. Now the word and its sibling, COVID-19, appear in more than two dozen pages about contact tracing, wastewater testing, disease modeling, workforce planning, and more. Owing to the wide-ranging effects of the novel coronavirus, Mathematica’s experts have sprung into action to understand its implications for primary care, child protective services, behavioral health, remote learning in K-12 education, surging unemployment among workers with disabilities, and food insecurity among children who no longer have access to daily school meals. Although the pandemic is touching almost every conceivable area of public wellbeing, it started as a public health threat and has galvanized Mathematica’s nearly 600 health care and policy experts, researchers, technologists, data scientists, clinicians, survey experts, and program design and management experts to apply their skills and creativity in responding to the crisis. For this episode of On the Evidence, Chris Trenholm, the managing director of health at Mathematica, discusses the impacts of COVID-19 on public health, what the pandemic reveals about the social determinants of health and racial disparities in health care, and how Mathematica’s partners in government, philanthropy, and the private-sector are developing new tools and strategies in light of the pandemic.

37 | Addressing Structural Racism in Policy Research Jun 19, 2020

Show notes

In early 2019, the Urban Institute published a brief about addressing structural racism through research and policy analysis. The paper summarizes lessons, promising practices, and recommendations previously discussed in a roundtable with 23 research groups. At the time of publication, the paper’s authors did not know that communities across the country would soon be organizing protests against structural racism in the wake of a recent string of high-profile incidents in which people of color were killed by law enforcement, occurring during a pandemic that disproportionately harms Black and Latinx Americans. Nevertheless, the brief might find new readers in the policy research field who—amid heightened awareness brought about by recent acts of social injustice—have committed to addressing structural racism and are looking for concrete steps they can take. The paper discusses the relationship between institutional choices made by organizations that conduct public policy research and the research these organizations produce. The guests for this episode are Kilolo Kijakazi and Cleo Jacobs Johnson. Kijakazi coauthored the Urban Institute brief and works with her organization to help it become more diverse in its staffing, the content of its work, and the audience it reaches. Kijakazi also conducts research and policy analysis on structural racism, the racial wealth gap, and economic security—including retirement security. Jacobs Johnson, a senior researcher at Mathematica who specializes in education, early childhood, and family support, served as Mathematica’s acting chief diversity officer for a year. A version of this episode with closed captioning is available on Mathematica's YouTube page here: http://ow.ly/uwU850Aconr Find the Urban brief about confronting structural racism in research and policy analysis here: http://ow.ly/jyqv50Acpv8

36 | Telehealth Transformation Under COVID-19 and the Implications for Equitable Care Jun 11, 2020

Show notes

In March, the COVID-19 pandemic forced organizations in the United States to adopt virtual and remote work wherever possible. This was especially true in health care, with hospitals and physician practices needing to clear their waiting rooms and minimize the risk of infections for patients and providers. As a result, Congress and the federal government removed many of the regulatory barriers—at least temporarily—that prevented patients from receiving care through video chats and phone calls. The latest episode of On the Evidence features a discussion about the rise of telehealth as an alternative to in-person care during the pandemic. Our guests for this episode are Mathematica’s Llew Brown and Diane Rittenhouse as well as Mei Wa Kwong of the Center for Connected Health Policy. In this episode, we discuss the rapid regulatory, policy, and implementation changes taking place in telehealth, what research has found about the effects of using telehealth, and what the rise of telehealth might mean for health care even after the pandemic. In particular, we focus on the role telehealth could play in supporting primary care, which has taken a severe financial hit since the pandemic began in the United States, and how telehealth could reduce or exacerbate existing health care disparities. A version of this episode with closed captioning is available on Mathematica's YouTube page here: http://ow.ly/aKga50AcotU

35 | Oakland’s Life Coaching Strategy to Address Youth Violence May 13, 2020

Show notes

On this episode of On the Evidence, we discuss life coaching, a violence reduction strategy being used by the city of Oakland, California, to help young people who have been involved with the juvenile justice system. Mathematica studied youth life coaching as part of a larger evaluation of Oakland Unite, a city initiative that supports community-based violence prevention programs. We interviewed the following guests: Peter Kim, manager of Oakland Unite Naihobe Gonzalez, senior researcher at Mathematica Kentrell Killens, a former life coach with Oakland Unite Anayeli Vega Gonzalez, a participant in the life coaching program Another life coach participant who preferred not to share his name Learn more about Mathematica's evaluation of Oakland Unite here: http://ow.ly/vfdn50zFmQ7 Read a blog based on this episode here: http://ow.ly/6nm150zEW9b

34 | Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Era of COVID-19 Apr 29, 2020

Show notes

It’s increasingly clear that although the novel 2019 coronavirus does not discriminate in who it infects, it does harm some groups of people more than others. The emerging evidence suggests that people who are Black, are 65 and older, or have certain conditions, such as diabetes or hypertension, are more likely to become severely ill from COVID-19. But income and occupation also play a role. The current pandemic has exposed inequities in society where, for example, segments of the workforce do not have health insurance, paid sick leave, the ability to work from home, or the ability to apply for unemployment benefits. For some, sheltering in place means a stressful, long-term inconvenience; for others, it means putting yourself at greater risk of domestic violence, or maybe choosing between losing paychecks or showing up in-person for jobs that put you and our loved ones at greater risk of being infected. The guest for this episode of On the Evidence is Ralanda Nelson, who leads diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at Mathematica. Nelson started her job in March, two weeks into Mathematica’s company-wide shift to working from home. In the interview, we discuss what it’s like to start a new job while sheltering in place; Nelson’s career path to her current role; and how the pandemic is spotlighting problems related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

33 | Culturally Responsive Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic Apr 08, 2020

Show notes

As schools close in order to contain the spread of COVID-19, some students are in a better position to continue learning from home than others. Even when students aren’t grappling with the fallout of a pandemic, they face disparities in their educational experiences and opportunities due to their differences in family income, differences in racial, ethnic, or other important demographic characteristics, and differences in access to technology. Some state and local education leaders are proactively adopting culturally responsive practices to dismantle social and institutional barriers that inhibit student success. For this episode of On the Evidence, a principal and an education researcher share insights from research and the field on implementing culturally responsive practices. Our guests are: • George Guy, Jr., who has spent more than 20 years in education and currently serves as the principal of Rosa International Middle School in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Guy has also helped lead efforts to identify and employ culturally responsive practices in his district and beyond, and; • Steven Malick, an education researcher at Mathematica who spent nearly a decade as a middle school math teacher and a coach of new teachers; For more information on improving educational equity through culturally responsive practices in schools, check out this free four-part webinar series conducted by the Mid-Atlantic Regional Educational Laboratory at Mathematica: https://event.on24.com/wcc/r/2055500/23F4AF51F3BEF736E0DE4C689CBFD066/606716 Want a quick primer on using culturally responsive practices in education? The Mid-Atlantic Regional Educational Laboratory at Mathematica has a four-page fact sheet: https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/regions/midatlantic/app/pdf/RELMA_Culturally_responsive_pedagogy_fact_sheet.pdf

32 | Can Algorithms Be Fair, Transparent, and Protect Children? Mar 25, 2020

Show notes

As technology improves organizations’ ability to collect, manage, and analyze data, it’s becoming easier to inform public policy decisions today in a range of areas, from health care to criminal justice, based on estimated risks in the future. On this episode of On the Evidence, I talk with three researchers who work with child welfare agencies in the United States to use algorithms—or, what they call predictive risk models—to inform decisions by case managers and their supervisors. My guests are Rhema Vaithianathan, Emily Putnam-Hornstein, and Beth Weigensberg. Vaithianathan is a professor of economics and director of the Centre for Social Data Analytics in the School of Social Sciences and Public Policy at Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand, and a professor of social data and analytics at the Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Queensland, Australia. Putnam-Hornstein is an associate professor of social work at the University of Southern California and the director of the Children’s Data Network. Weigensberg is a senior researcher at Mathematica. Vaithianathan and Putnam-Hornstein have already worked with Allegheny County in Pennsylvania to implement a predictive risk model that uses hundreds of data elements to help the people screening calls about child abuse and neglect better assess the risk associated with each case of potential maltreatment. Now they are working with two more counties in Colorado to pilot a similar predictive risk model. Last year, they initiated a partnership with Mathematica to replicate and scale-up their work by offering the same kind of assistance to states and counties around the country. Find more information about Mathematica’s partnership with the Centre for Social Data Analytics and the Children’s Data Network here: https://www.mathematica.org/our-publications-and-findings/publications/predictive-risk-modeling-for-child-protection Find The New York Times Magazine article about Allegheny County's use of algorithms in child welfare here: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/02/magazine/can-an-algorithm-tell-when-kids-are-in-danger.html Find the publications page for the the Centre for Social Data Analytics here: https://csda.aut.ac.nz/research/recent-publications Find the results of an independent evaluation of the Allegheny County predictive risk model here: https://www.alleghenycountyanalytics.us/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Impact-Evaluation-from-16-ACDHS-26_PredictiveRisk_Package_050119_FINAL-6.pdf

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