Evidence-Based Practice

While faced with new challenges, reduced budgets, and growing populations requiring more services, states are stronger than ever, and the work they do is more effective than ever in reaching individuals and addressing their needs. The National Home and Community Based Services (HCBS) Conference 2017 highlights these achievements, allowing states to share best practices, present unique partnerships, and recognize the work of their peers.

Chronic conditions are a part of many Americans’ lives, and there are valuable programs that have been demonstrated to help people with chronic conditions to self-manage their daily lives and the disease with which they live. This briefing discusses self-management programs, and focuses on programs that rely on peer leaders who educate small groups about chronic disease self-management.

This report discusses what is known about effective programs to support family caregivers and emphasizes evidence-based programs for family caregivers of persons living with dementia. Evidence-based programs to help caregiving families are not widely available in communities. This report looks at barriers to scaling up effective programs and draws attention to programs that have been shown to improve one or more aspects of the quality of life of family caregivers.

A national survey of Area Agencies on Aging is conducted every two to three years. The National Association of Area Agencies on Aging (n4a) has released their 2017 survey report. They surveyed 622 Area Agencies on Aging (AAAs), with 412 completing the survey, to discover what services they commonly offer, how AAAs address funding, and what their policy priorities are.

Value-Based Payment (VBP) are alternative payment models that reward high-quality, cost-effective care. While many Medicaid state programs are developing VBP systems for physical health services, they have not made such advances in Medicaid behavioral health care services. The Center for Health Care Strategies’ (CHCS) brief, produced with the California Health Care Foundation, details how five states are innovating their Medicaid managed care organizations through VBP models.

This report seeks to provide empirical evidence on the relationship between the primary impairments of Social Security disability program beneficiaries and the employment and earnings experiences of those beneficiaries. The authors' findings can inform new initiatives designed to help beneficiaries return to work or successfully transition into the adult workforce.

The lack of recognized standards for what constitutes sufficient monitoring has hindered efforts to assess the effectiveness of state oversight of managed care plans. This brief describes an approach used to evaluate state oversight of a new Medicaid managed care program for individuals with disabilities in Washington. The approach evaluates both the type and vigor of monitoring activities by the state and the degree to which the state's activities achieved their desired program outcomes.

The state-federal vocational rehabilitation program serves approximately one million individuals a year and spends about $3 billion annually. This article looks at evidence-based best practices from the program.