For most kids summer means no school, no homework, and no worries. Or, summer might mean no breakfast or lunch. Unfortunately, this not only leads to hungry children but can also diminish the academic gains from the previous year. Poor summer nutrition has been closely linked with summer learning loss, coined the “summer slump.” Food insecurity has been linked with...
What is Value-Based Care, Again?
If there is an annoyingly vague policy term that gets bandied about when discussing Medicaid, it’s “value-based care.” How do we define “value-based care?” What are the policy triggers that indicate “value-based care?” How do we know if “value-based care” is being achieved? Frankly, “value-based care” gets thrown out so often and so casually that it starts to lose any...
Zulma Zabala honored as outstanding teacher at Case Mandel School nonprofit program
Zulma Zabala, our Senior Fellow, Community & Racial Equity and is the winner of the 2023 John A. Yankey Outstanding MNO Teacher of the Year Award! The Case Western Reserve University Masters of Nonprofits Organizations commencement award honors outstanding teaching, as nominated by students. “This professor is a tremendous addition to the MNO faculty! I did not approach her Nonprofit...
TANF: What it is. What it funds. And why it matters.
It feels like Groundhog Day with the debate going on in Washington D.C. over the federal debt limit. We’ve been here before, right? While negotiations are ongoing (and could be in a more solid place, considering this was written last week), you have likely heard about some health and human service-related policies that are “on the table,” so to speak....
Funding Changes in the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services
On Wednesday, April 26th, the Ohio House passed House Bill 33, the state operating budget. The amendments made to the bill changed some of the as-introduced funding levels for the state budget. Within the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (MHAS), several reductions were made to line items that have changed allocations for programs across the agency. Let’s take...
Artificial Intelligence in Behavioral Health and Suicide Prevention: Opportunities, and Challenges
Throughout the past year, there has been a steady rise in interest in artificial intelligence (AI). The overall onset of AI technology has provided remarkable innovations in computation, completing a large variety of tasks at speeds that were once deemed impossible. With the recent explosion of AI technologies revolutionizing so many different industries at once, many are taken aback by...
Continuing the search for an HIV vaccine
May 18th marks National HIV Vaccine Awareness Day annually. This is a day to revisit the milestones in HIV vaccine development, to honor volunteers, to think about recent research results, and to create a pathway for success. It is also a call to action! For more than 40 years, some of the most brilliant minds in the world have devoted...
Programs impacted by the House-passed budget (HB33) for older adults and people with disabilities
On April 26, 2023, the Ohio House of Representatives passed its version of the state budget, known as House Bill (HB) 33. The legislative language for HB33 is over 5000 pages long, but there are two documents prepared by the Legislative Service Commission which may be helpful to use when viewing changes to the programs: the appropriation spreadsheet and the...
State budget moving quickly through the Senate
The budget is moving quickly through the Senate process, and we wanted to offer an update on where things stand. The budget bill, now formally Amended Substitute House Bill 33 (hereafter referred to as HB33) was officially referred to the Senate Finance committee on May 3. Now the informal hearings that have already been occurring for weeks in the Senate...