AV Goes to Austin

The National Council of State Legislatures updated its report on policing legislation, showing an increasing trend of bipartisan reform bills. These reforms address crucial issues such as police use of force, data transparency, civilian oversight, training, and certification measures across the country. 

What’s Happening: Since the police killing of George Floyd in May 2020, state legislatures have been particularly active in addressing policing policy. Every state has introduced legislation, with more than 4,500 bills considered across the country. The report relied on two databases, one tracking statutory policing laws that were already on the books and a second tracking all new bills introduced on a variety of police accountability topics since May 2020.
 

Why it Matters: This legislative trend shows that police accountability can be enacted at the state level.

State-level reforms circumvent both the gridlock that often prevents congressional action and the difficulty of trying to shift policing locally in a country that is home to over 18,000 law enforcement agencies. Laws that place restrictions on use of force, along with broader measures that require public data sharing, help to hold police accountable to the public. Laws that institute better professional standards for police — such as new training, employment, certification, and decertification rules — have also gained traction, sometimes with support from police, since they help ensure high-quality hiring and prevent problem employees from bouncing between agencies. 
 

What’s Next: Momentum for state legislative reforms is expected to continue with new bills in upcoming legislative sessions, according to lawmakers, advocates like the Police Project, and the nonpartisan National Council of State Legislatures, which continues to track progress. 
 

By Kira Lerner, Arnold Ventures contributor
 

Clayton Wilkerson enrolled in Lambda coding boot camp — now called Bloom Institute of Technology — in part because he was intrigued by the school's income-share agreement, which promised deferred tuition payments until he got a job paying $50,000 or more. However, when Wilkerson requested to retake some of his classes because the teaching wasn’t substantive, the school withdrew him and billed him. He now owes up to $30,000.

“I now owe these people money, and I don’t have a job to show for it,” says Wilkerson.
 

What's Happening: Because of his student contract, Wilkerson's only legal recourse is arbitration. Arbitration is typically a shield companies use to protect them when people sue, and its expense is often a deterrent for complainants. But the National Student Legal Defense Network (Student Defense), in partnership with Black & Buffone PLLC, has flipped that shield on its head and filed two waves of arbitration for six former Lambda students.

What’s Next: What's needed is greater accountability for schools with predatory practices such as Lambda’s. “We need policymakers to stop the scams and ensure real quality and values for students who are just trying to give themselves a chance,” says AV Director of Higher Education Kelly McManus.

By Rhiannon Collette, journalism manager
 

Of the dozens of care models the federal government has tested to incentivize health care providers to deliver high-quality care that focuses on improving patient outcomes while lowering costs, the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) has proven the most effective.

But a decade after its launch, provider participation in the MSSP has stagnated. Now, the federal government is seeking to re-energize participation in this program with proposed rule changes that increase participation and help drive down health care spending.

Why it Matters: The MSSP has demonstrated promise as an effective payment and delivery system reform, and with health care spending continuing to rise, strengthening the program and increasing provider participation is imperative to rein in costs.

What's Next: In a recently submitted letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Arnold Ventures applauds the government for proposing reforms that would solve shortcomings in the existing program and expand the program to achieve greater savings in the long run. We also urge CMS to be thoughtful in its proposed changes, refining some proposals to ensure they don't undermine or weaken the ability to achieve cost savings, and we urge CMS to consider larger scale reforms that could have an even greater impact.

Read the story > 

Criminal Justice

• A new report from AV grantee CLASP offers insights and recommendations for an alternative approach to community supervision called “community repair.” As explained in the report, community repair removes corrections and law enforcement from the reentry process and focuses instead on meeting the basic needs of formerly incarcerated people.
   
• As several political campaigns have come under attack for employing people with criminal records, Reason explains why “hiring former incarcerated people is good, actually.”
   
• Police and criminologists are praising Dallas’ plan to reduce violent crime, which relies on hot-spot policing, place-network investigations, focused deterrence, and other evidence-based practices, the Dallas Morning News reports.
   
• U.S. Marshals announced they are the first federal law enforcement agency to sign the 30x30 pledge, a nationwide initiative to support more women in policing.
   
• Fact-checking website Snopes had to weigh in to dispel some “Mostly False” statements about Illinois’ Pretrial Fairness Act, which eliminates cash bail and instead requires judges to release or detain people on a basis of public safety, not wealth.

Health Care

• Survey says: Americans are frustrated with our health care system. Learn how the health care teams at AV are working to improve health care delivery, lower costs, and reduce disparities in access.
   
• More than 700 patents protect America’s top 10 selling drugs, with companies amassing dozens of secondary patents after FDA approval to block competition, a new report from AV grantee I-MAK shows. Such excessive patenting only drives up drug prices.
   

• User fees from the drug industry make up almost half of the FDA budget, and Congress must reauthorize funding by the end of the month. AV grantee Dr. Reshma Ramachandran told The New York Times this week that doctors do not understand that the drug industry pressures FDA to meet approval deadlines, the wrong metric to care about. “It should be: ‘Are patients healthier? Are patients safe?’” the outlet reported. “And that just seems like an afterthought.”’ (free link)
  
  Related: Dr. Reshma Ramachandran is on a mission to push for patient safety and transparency.

Higher Education

• Post-student-debt cancellation, Michelle Dimino at Third Way discusses the need for comprehensive transparency and accountability reforms that will hold predatory and low-performing institutions accountable for their outcomes to protect tomorrow’s students and borrowers.
   

Contraceptive Choice and Access

• The FDA scheduled a meeting on over-the-counter birth control for Nov. 18, reports The Hill. Ms. Magazine explains the FDA process, the need, and the coverage for OTC pills. Questions about affordability remain.

Evidence-Based Policy

• The Pew Center calls for states to take advantage of research and philanthropy when working on evidence-based policy, alongside the companion piece “How Nongovernmental Stakeholders Can Support States in Advancing Evidence-Based Policymaking.”
   

• The National Academy of Medicine awarded Mary D. Naylor the 2022 Gustav O. Lienhard Award for Advancement of Health Care for her role as the architect of the Transitional Care Model and pioneer in the field of transitional care, which has improved the lives of millions of older adults living with complex health and social needs. Naylor is the lead on AV’s Moving the Needle project to expand the Transitional Care Model in multiple hospitals in several states. Mathematica is conducting the accompanying RCT evaluation.

Journalism

• In commemoration of Democracy Day, the Democracy Fund updated its directory of evidence and research demonstrating the need for a free and fair press to safeguard democracy.
   
• The tiny state of Vermont boasts a healthy media landscape, with news declines reversed in part by the nonprofit outlet VT Digger, The New Yorker reports. It's an optimistic sign of journalism's resiliency and the promise of nonprofit news.

• Houston Matters dives into new research on targeted misdemeanor bail reform in Harris County that allows people to return to their jobs and families while awaiting trial rather than stay jailed simply because they cannot afford bail. Host Craig Cohen talks to report author Paul Heaton, academic director of the Quattrone Center, about the reform's positive impacts on public safety, recidivism, and the people charged — fewer pled guilty or ended up in jail, and there was a reduction in future contact with the justice system. AV's Vice President of Criminal Justice Zeke Edwards then discusses the larger landscape of pretrial reform around the country, how incarceration in America has ballooned over several decades, and what evidence-based reforms can reduce our nation's carceral footprint while maintaining public safety. It starts at the 27-minute mark.
  
  Related: Cops and Conservatives Backed This Texas Bail Reform. Now Researchers Show It To Be a Success.
   
• "You Might Be Right," a new podcast from the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy at the University of Tennessee, takes its name from one of the late Sen. Baker's most famous sayings. (He was known for crossing the aisle). The hosts are Tennessee's two most recent governors, Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, and Bill Haslam, a Republican, and their first episode tackles gun violence and ways to protect Americans while preserving Second Amendment rights. They dig into the facts on gun violence, the "devastating" two-decade ban on research, and potential policy solutions with Arne Duncan, former Secretary of Education under President Obama and founder of Chicago CRED, a nonprofit that aims to reduce gun violence, and author and veteran David French. This is a podcast that, like its namesake, takes bipartisanship — and what it can accomplish — seriously.
  Listen here.

• We wrote in this space a few weeks ago about The Visiting Room Project, a collection of first-person testimonials from more than 100 people serving life sentences at Louisiana's notorious Angola State Prison. Now, listen to the project's co-creator, Calvin Duncan, talk to NPR about this deeply personal body of work. Duncan himself was in Angola for 24 years before he was exonerated, and during his time there acted as a "jailhouse lawyer," hearing the stories of those incarcerated at a young age and watching them "mature into productive men." Most of them will never leave Angola. "What I hope that people get from these interviews is that we just shouldn't just rely on data," Duncan says. "We should get to know the person that the data represents."

• A 10-year-old has taken his fight against unaffordable insulin prices to Congress. (It shouldn't have to be this way.)
   
• The nonprofit Nevada Independent captured stunning photos of an annual tradition: The Great Reno Balloon Race.
   
• Could "Ferris Bueller’s Day Off" really be done? The Washington Post finds out. (free link)

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