Big Wins of 2022

By Evan Mintz, director of communications

If policymakers hope to save lives from gun violence, then the United States needs to invest in researching and collecting data about firearm use and injuries, Arnold Ventures Director of Criminal Justice Asheley Van Ness writes in the Houston Chronicle. 

What’s Happening: The Houston Chronicle editorial board wrote an editorial comparing gun violence to drunk driving and called for a political movement similar to Mothers Against Drunk Driving to take on the issue. While the comparison has merit, Van Ness wrote in response, the federal government has failed to treat both the same way.

“The federal government has spent decades supporting research into the automotive policies that can save lives, from seatbelt mandates to drunk driving laws and proper road design,” Van Ness writes. “In fact, the U.S. spends roughly $1,000 per motor vehicle death studying ways to make our streets safer. In comparison, we only spend $63 per firearm death studying ways to save lives from gun violence.”

Why it Matters: Research and data are necessary to help us understand what policies are effective at stemming the bloodshed of gun violence. 

“Change starts with adequate funding for research, or else policymakers may end up spending time and money on programs that simply don’t work,” Van Ness writes.

What’s Next: A study supported by Arnold Ventures and the Joyce Foundation found that it will cost $600 million over five years to build out the necessary data infrastructure and answer the most pressing policy questions about effective gun policy in the United States. 

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Related: This week marked the 10th anniversary of the Sandy Hook school shooting, an unprecedented tragedy that sparked the modern day movement for gun safety. The New Republic lists the policy wins since that time. And The New York Times offers 12 achingly beautiful profiles of children killed this year by gun violence, which is the leading cause of death for American kids. 
 

Related: AV President and CEO Kelli Rhee says foundations are stepping in to fill the gun research funding gap, but more support is needed.

By Juliana Keeping, communications manager
 

A new analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that some of the nation's largest health systems have done quite well financially during the pandemic. The report looked at the three largest for-profit hospital systems, finding all had positive operating margins that exceeded pre-pandemic levels. The report dropped as Congress considers additional support for hospitals ahead of the deadline to fund the federal government, which was extended to next week.

Why it Matters: The hospital industry is asking for fiscal relief and to delay a scheduled 4% cut to Medicare federal reimbursement rates for hospitals. Stakeholders like the American Hospital Association have been painting a Dickensian picture, with talk of hospitals’ systemic collapse. But it’s worth noting that the impact of the pandemic and broader economic trends have had a varied impact across the industry.

Medicare provides health insurance for people over 65 as well as some younger people with disabilities. The federal program reimburses hospitals for services its beneficiaries utilize at rates the federal government sets. But for privately insured patients, the prices paid to hospitals are on average more than twice the Medicare rate, ballooning the cost of commercial health insurance.  

What’s Next: We spend more per capita on health care in the U.S. than any other high-income country, and the economic consequences for Americans are dire. High and rising health care costs are linked to ruinous medical debt, skyrocketing private insurance premiums, and wage stagnation. The high prices hospitals charge private insurance companies are driving much of the increase.

As Congress considers additional health care spending, the KFF report helps bring the nuance required to inform policymakers about the financial position of the hospital industry.

By Evan Mintz, director of communications

Two years after implementing its bail reform law, New York is seeing less bail-setting, higher amounts when bail is set, and persistent racial disparities, according to a new report by the Data Collaborative for Justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

What’s Happening: In 2020, New York’s new bail reform law went into effect by eliminating bail for most misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies. The intent of the law was to reduce the use of pretrial detention, limit the role of money in the pretrial process, shrink racial disparities, and maintain community safety. These findings highlight how the law has moved toward these goals — and how much work remains. 

Why it Matters: New York’s bail law sparked a public debate about the impact of reform on community safety, but less has been said about whether the explicit goals of reform have been achieved or not. This report refocuses attention on those original goals. 

What’s Next: The Data Collaborative for Justice results can help guide state legislators and local practitioners working to improve the law and its application across New York. 

“With this report, we sought to examine how the reform is faring on three of its many goals: reducing the use of bail, making it more affordable, and curtailing racial disparities,” said Data Collaborative for Justice Director Michael Rempel. ​”Perhaps unsurprisingly, our results point to a mix of both successes and shortcomings. We hope this and other research can aid policymakers seeking to improve future implementation.”

Related: The New York Daily News covers a new FWD.us report on misleading news reports driving the backlash against New York's bail reform — and includes a reference to Arnold Ventures' "Hidden Costs of Pretrial Detention Revisited" study.

Criminal Justice

• In The New York Times, Dr. Phillip Atiba Goff of Yale University tackles misconceptions about the root causes of violence — and the solutions.
   
• The Community Violence Intervention Collaborative — a White House initiative supported by Arnold Ventures and other philanthropies — is being touted as an overlooked success in preventing violence, Politico reports. But rigorous assessments of the program's impacts are still years away.
   
• Rebecca Silber, Arnold Ventures director of criminal justice, was selected as a 2023 Women in Power fellow by the 92nd Street Y.
   
• Congress passed bipartisan legislation that will provide funding to law enforcement agencies for de-escalation training, the Associated Press reports.
   
• Legislators in Ohio passed a raft of criminal justice reforms, including around traffic stops, the ability for people to earn early release from prison, and shielding some criminal records.
   
• In the St. Louis Dispatch, Jillian Snider and Sarah Anderson discuss how criminal justice reforms and alternative models of policing can help Missouri communities and be cost effective.
   

Health

• Mass shooting survivors endure lifelong wounds — and high medical bills, via CNN.
   
• In the most affordable state for health care, patients must work 269 hours to pay off a medical bill, according to one recent analysis.


• The National Conference of State Legislatures reflects on how prescription drug policy shook out in the states in 2022. Here’s to state lawmakers continuing to move policies that help people afford their prescription drugs in 2023.

Higher Education

• MDRC issued a report evaluating the Scaling Up College Completion Efforts for Student Success (SUCCESS) program that focuses on the experiences of students ages 25 and older, explaining how the program supported them in their educational endeavors.
   
• Despite a scramble to save the school, Cazenovia College plans to close in 2023, reports Syracuse.com. AV Higher Education Fellow Clare McCann foresees a similar possibility for small schools with declining enrollments.
   
• Higher Ed Dive reports on the bill three senators introduced to provide oversight of for-profit colleges. One of the mechanisms of oversight would include publishing a public list of colleges that have conducted illegal activities or engaged in fraudulent practices. 
   
• While on-time college completion rates have gone up from 2016 to 2021 overall, according to a report from Complete College America, Higher Ed Dive notes that there are significant disparities in the rates when broken down by race, geography, age, and part-time versus full time students. Several evaluations of college completion and student success programs show impact.

Contraceptive Choice and Access

• Healthline explains the process, safety, and impact of pharmacist-prescribed birth control, now legal in 20 states and Washington, D.C.

Democracy

• After multiple costly runoff elections, Georgia might be the next state to adopt ranked-choice voting, which Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger has endorsed as an option, in Reason.

• Explore millions of research papers from a collection that spans digitized 18th-century journals to the latest Open Access conference proceedings.
   
• Here's what the world searched for in 2022. (You can also break it down by country.)
   
• The deep satisfaction of mathematically efficient cookie cutters.
   
• "The road to this moment has been long, but those who believe in equality and justice – you never gave up," President Biden said as he signed the Respect for Marriage Act, a bipartisan bill that codifies same-sex and interracial marriages.