|
|
|
The Abstract
|
|
> By Stephanie DiCapua Getman, Arnold Ventures
|
I write this newsletter every week from Houston, a city you’ve probably heard just endured yet another once-in-a-lifetime event: Texas’ massive winter storm. So first, apologies that there was no newsletter last week. As the cold set in, I was busy doing some cost-benefit analysis — much like our state leaders and regulators have done with Texas’ electric grid in recent years. Do I invite close friends, with whom we haven’t spent any time indoors since COVID began, to weather the cold in our currently warm and powered home? Easy calculation. Yes. When the power inevitably goes out, do we heat this home of now 5 adults, 6 children, 4 dogs, and a cat with a (deemed safe for indoors) propane-powered heater, all the while still worrying about carbon monoxide poisoning? Yes, we do. Can we collect ice and harvest water from the gutters? Great idea! The children became a self-reliant herd, entertaining one another with games and antics that on a normal day, I might have put a stop to. They will remember this as the most epic slumber party of their lives, rather than the scary and life-threatening situation it was. But there are families in this city who did not come out unscathed: The Sugar Land mother who lost her three beautiful children to a house fire. The Conroe family whose 11-year-old son died in his bed from hypothermia. The Southwest Houston family who lost a mother and daughter to carbon monoxide poisoning when they ran the car in their garage to charge a cell phone. Those with the fewest resources were left to fend for themselves. I know you’ve heard these stories, but it’s necessary to remember they didn’t have to die. This didn’t have to happen the way it did.
Texas regulators and lawmakers made their own cost-benefit analysis in the aftermath of the 2011 winter storm, and despite recommendations, chose not to “winterize” our power plants for an event like this. ERCOT, the grid operator, came 4 minutes and 37 seconds from realizing the worst implications of that decision — a months-long power meltdown that likely would have led to more deaths and discomfort. As Thomas Friedman put it in a recent column, “Can you believe this is happening in America?” Yes, I can. We’ve shown time and again that we are willing to put up with prioritizing short-term profits over the social good — or, as Friedman says, “privatizing the gains and socializing the losses.” Look at so many other areas of American life where this is true: Who is suffering, and who is profiting? Community groups are picking up the slack when government can’t or won’t provide and industry falls short, and even then, the charitable giving they depend on is kept at arm’s length. I am still outraged by what happened in my state last week, and while I can’t speak for all Texans, I think many would rather invest more in our infrastructure than freeze. The fact is, the state did not heed warnings of a catastrophe, and people died. Now we must thoughtfully and deliberately assess what went wrong and take the needed steps to prevent this from happening again — in a way that puts people over profits.
|
|
|
|
States to Big Pharma: Watch Out
|
|
|
|
By Rhiannon Meyers Collette, Communications Manager
If the flurry of activity in state legislatures is any indication, this is shaping up to be a must-watch year for drug pricing reform in the states. Fed up with surging drug spending hammering state budgets and responding to a clamor from constituents for affordable health care, state policymakers are growing increasingly ambitious in their reform efforts — introducing and implementing a variety of evidence-based policies that would lower drug prices and offer much-needed financial relief.
What's Happening: It's well-known that prescription drug prices are unsustainably expensive, and survey after survey shows that Americans agree that action must be taken, but federal legislation has been stymied by gridlock and fragmented priorities. In the absence of Congressional movement, states have entered the reform movement in a big and bold fashion — from introducing prescription drug affordability boards (PDABs) to linking drug prices on some of the most expensive medications to the much-lower prices paid in other countries. "The good news is that states have the ability, the authority and the appetite to meaningfully lower prescription drug prices and create more affordable and equitable health care at a time when it's needed most," says Andrea Noda, AV’s director of drug pricing.
What's Next: Drug pricing reform enthusiasts would be wise to keep their eyes on a few states this year. Maryland lawmakers recently overrode a gubernatorial veto to establish funding for the nation's first prescription drug affordability board. Minnesota is beating back a legal challenge by pharma against its popular insulin pricing law — named in memory of Alec Smith, who died at age 26 from insulin rationing — while continuing to press for even more aggressive reforms. And New Mexico and New Jersey are eyeing creating their very own PDABs.
Read the story >
Related: As drug prices keep rising, state lawmakers propose tough new bills to curb them.
Related: Read a Kaiser Health News profile of Marilyn Bartlett, who “might be the closest thing health policy has to a folk hero.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By Evan Mintz, Communications Manager
If 2020 was a year of protests for policing reform, then 2021 may be a year of legislative action. This week, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signed a sweeping criminal justice package that also covers policing. The new law, House Bill 3653, was spearheaded by the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus and implements three broad policies that will help Illinois reduce or eliminate structural barriers to police reform: Standardizing use of force, mandating data collection and transparency, and enhancing certification and decertification.
Why It Matters: Prtizker’s signature on the new law is a critical step toward building accountable and transparent policing systems, but the governor has also gone further by working to ensure that the state will provide the funding necessary to effectively implement and maintain these reforms.
What’s Next: Other state leaders can look to Illinois as a model, and we’re already seeing legislators in Washington and Maryland pursuing their own bills that will help remove barriers to lasting change in policing. Meanwhile, the federal government has a role to play in providing financial support for policing reforms at a local and state level. Congress and the Biden-Harris administration should reexamine the purpose and impact of Department of Justice grants, which can be a powerful tool for strengthening police accountability and transparency.
Read the story >
Related: Murders spiked in 2020. That's exactly why we need policing reforms, write Thomas Abt and Richard Rosenfeld.
Related: The Marshall Project and FiveThirtyEight analyze the cost of police misconduct to cities — and the shoddy record-keeping that makes it impossible to know if settlements make a difference. Five years after settling with the family of Tamir Rice for $6 million, Cleveland has paid more money in police misconduct settlements than in the five years before Rice was killed.
|
|
|
|
|
Who's Maximizing Opportunity
|
|
|
The Biden-Harris Administration, which this week announced its intention to expand the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) to include businesses owned by people with justice system involvement.
What's Happening: We’ve written previously about how the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program excluded a sizable demographic of individuals with criminal justice involvement from receiving relief amid the global pandemic and economic turndown. This policy perpetuated a history of racism within our country’s economic and criminal justice systems. Black and Latino people, particularly men, were disproportionately excluded.
Why It Matters: “People who have been involved with the criminal justice system often face barriers to employment even after they pay their dues to society. As a result, many turn to self-employment to afford their rent, put food on the table, and support their families...At a time when the nation is grappling with the reality of structural racism, [the policy of excluding people with records from PPP] only works to perpetuate inequality,” said AV’s Amy Solomon, vice president of criminal justice. The administration’s decision is an example of forcefully confronting longstanding, discriminatory practices that have disproportionately harmed Black and Brown communities, businesses, and people.
What’s Next: The administration's action is a laudable step in the right direction, but expanding PPP is not enough. We must continue to ensure that all directly impacted people have equitable access to economic opportunity — an integral part of helping people move forward and improving public safety.
Read our statement >
|
|
|
|
|
|
By Rhiannon Meyers Collette, Communications Manager
In a pandemic that has disproportionately harmed communities of color and at-risk individuals, a group of individuals who are eligible for both Medicaid and Medicare have been especially hard hit — yet there has been a long-standing shortfall in evidence and data needed to develop and deliver better care models.
What’s Happening: COVID-19 has amplified the urgency for bolstering the quantity and quality of research and data collection, which is why we partnered with two federal agencies for a convening to bring attention to this need. Arielle Mir, AV’s vice president of complex care, summarized it best: "It's imperative that we invest in the research now so that we can quickly, and effectively, spur momentum to improve care for those who need it most at a time when the needs are critical."
Dive Deeper: The convening of hundreds of researchers and policy experts ignited an important conversation and helped lay the groundwork for building and expanding the research pipeline. It also highlighted some of the new data sets that are coming online that will help facilitate more holistic studies of dual-eligible individuals. To keep the conversation going, we have posted a full recording of the convening on our site, and have included meeting materials that are chock full of good information for anyone interested in this work.
Read the story > |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jens Ludwig of University of Chicago on how law enforcement agencies can use data to better inform hiring processes. Research shows that a relatively small share of police officers account for a disproportionate number of misconduct complaints. Unfortunately, by the time officers begin racking up civilian complaints, it’s often too late to terminate them thanks to stringent union rules. But what if those officers at high risk of misconduct could be identified and weeded out before they joined a department? “In our paper we talk about how we can try to use data to identify officers who are on a trajectory that puts them at elevated risk for misconduct, with the hope that departments can then do a combination of informing HR where appropriate and providing officers with extra supports and training where that’s appropriate,” Ludwig says.
Read the Q&A >
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| • |
Bloomberg looking at how the pandemic has only exacerbated the opioid crisis. People are “living in tents because they lost their spot in sober homes because they lost their job. It’s so much worse than it was when Covid began.”
|
|
| • |
Many Black Americans are hampered in saving for retirement by such factors as less intergenerational wealth, more college debt, lower incomes, and lower homeownership rates than white Americans, reports the Wall Street Journal.
|
|
| • |
How local initiatives — including pharmacist-prescribing — are expanding birth control access during the pandemic in Massachusetts, via Boston.com.
|
|
| • |
Nicholas Kristof’s powerful column about his childhood friend Mike, which advocates for the use of social programs like Year Up that help Americans who are falling behind.
|
|
| • |
How auto IRAs are helping Americans build retirement security: Savers increased 142 percent, contributions nearly tripled, and the number of participating employers increased nearly 50 percent.
Related: Virginia moves closer to having an auto-IRA of its own.
|
|
| • |
Nick Troiano of Unite America writing in The Hill on the need for structural reforms in our voting system and why America doesn't have the third party it wants.
|
|
| • |
News that an independent investigation found Aurora, Colo., police and paramedics made substantial errors at nearly every stage of their interaction with Elijah McClain, who died in police custody, and that detectives tasked with investigating the incident stretched the truth to exonerate the officers involved, via the Denver Post.
|
|
|
|
| • |
An in-depth look at the history and landscape of our nation’s debtor’s prisons — and why this insidious practice must end.
|
|
| • |
With our energy system in flux, The New Yorker dives into nuclear energy, and why some see a clear role for its use.
|
|
| • |
What it means to be “wintering,” which writer Katherine May explains in her new book as “a metaphor for the inevitable times in life when it is no longer possible to maintain the pace of growth and forward motion we have come to expect, when the realities of loss, death and sorrow keep us closer to home. Times like right now.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
This 60 Minutes episode about COVID’s toll on the loved ones of Americans who died. Since this episode aired, we have hit more than half a million deaths, an unfathomable number that this Washington Post data visualization creatively illustrates. For those left behind, plans have been shattered and any hope for a return to pre-COVID normalcy erased. These families talk about their painful last goodbyes — often said through a screen or window — and how their lives have been forever changed.
Also, this short but powerful NBC News tribute offers a personal look at some of COVID’s victims, in their own words:
|
|
|
|
|
|
This Decarceration Nation podcast, where host Josh Hoe interviews Allison Frankel, author of the Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union report “Revoked: How Probation and Parole Feed Mass Incarceration in the United States.” Frankel discusses how she came to work on criminal justice issues (she credits her parents), her thoughts on the “disturbing” political narrative around homelessness, and the data and hidden costs she uncovered in her research on probation and parole as a driver of mass incarceration. “There’s no real evidence that this is actually working compared to just giving people help getting jobs, getting housing, getting stable transportation, getting any health care that they need, just giving them those services, without the surveillance aspect, without the punishment aspect.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Our Complex Care team is funding research into how to improve the systems that deliver care to a population of more than 12 million people who are dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid. They are seeking to fund researchers who are guided by the following principles: policy relevance, rigor and independence, and alignment with our strategy. Learn more here.
The Criminal Justice and Evidence-Based Policy teams at Arnold Ventures are teaming up to learn more about what works in criminal justice reform in an ongoing request for proposals for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that will test programs and practices. There is no deadline for submissions.
The Evidence-Based Policy team invites grant applications to conduct randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of social programs in any area of U.S. policy. Details are here.
View all of our RFPs here.
|
|
|
|
|
Have an evidence-based week,
– Stephanie
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Stephanie DiCapua Getman develops and executes Arnold Ventures' digital communications strategy with a focus on multimedia storytelling and audience engagement and oversees daily editorial operations and design.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Were you sent this briefing by a friend? Sign up here to get the AV Newsletter.
|
|
|
|
You received this message because you signed up for Arnold Ventures' newsletter.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
