RAND researchers conducted a systematic review that synthesized evidence from trials of meditation interventions to provide estimates of their efficacy and safety in treating adults diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder.
RAND researchers conducted a systematic review that synthesized evidence from randomized controlled trials of mindfulness meditation interventions — used adjunctively or as monotherapy — to provide estimates of their efficacy and safety in alleviating chronic pain in adults.
Men who are the primary caregivers of youth in the child welfare system tend to be more similar than different from their female counterparts.
A motivational interviewing approach that targets social networks to reduce risky behavior was found to be helpful in a focus group of residents and staff of Housing First, a permanent supportive housing organization for formerly homeless people.
The VA often performs better than or similarly to other systems of care with regard to the safety and effectiveness of care.
This evidence review found that palliative care improves outcomes for cancer, dementia, congestive heart failure, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Recent high-profile outbreaks such as Ebola and Zika have illustrated the transnational nature of infectious diseases. Countries that are most vulnerable to outbreaks may be higher priorities for technical support. RAND's Infectious Disease Vulnerability Index should help U.S. government and international agencies identify these countries and inform programming to preemptively mitigate the spread and effects of potential transnational outbreaks.
A systematic review evaluated the efficacy and safety of St. John's wort (SJW) in adults with major depressive disorder (MDD) compared to placebo and active comparator and whether the effects vary by severity of MDD.
Identifying key characteristics of successful fall prevention exercise programs can help clinicians and health system leaders link patients to appropriate community-based programs.
Rigorous integration of primary and preventive medical services into behavioral health settings may help improve medical outcomes for people with serious mental illness.
Describes a roadmap with five objectives for the Chilean government to expand its health information technology (IT) capabilities over the next ten years.
This report provides an overview of decision-support tools, including models and nonmodeling approaches, to inform both modelers and policymakers. It offers ways to use these tools to help address real-world policy questions related to infectious disease prevention, detection, control, and response and recommends best practices for technical experts and policymakers to collaborate in developing and using the tools.
Stakeholder perceptions and use of collaborative care could be improved by enhancing the design of the web-based therapy tools; increasing the frequency of team meetings and case presentations; and expanding training for primary care providers on screening and treatment for PTSD and depression and on the collaborative care model's structure, processes, and offerings.
Professional associations can use their member networks to collect timely survey data to inform best practices during and immediately after public health emergencies.
To understand how consumers make decisions and the extent to which various factors can hinder decisionmaking, RAND researchers reviewed the literature on health insurance choice and on designing websites to support consumers' choices and, where possible, gleaned best practices from the literature. To understand the approaches health insurance websites have taken to convey information to consumers, they then reviewed 20 websites.
This document compiles the RAND Corporation's body of work on veterans' transitions to civilian life and highlights the breadth of topics RAND has studied. It distills more than a decade's worth of research on many facets of veteran life into a set of ten questions and answers gleaned from this work.
Previous studies have shown that social spending is associated with better health outcomes in OECD countries. This exploratory study builds on this finding by widening the scope of the analysis, by incorporating other societal factors — namely, social capital and income inequality — and by assessing these relationships not only at the cross-national level but also at the cross-state level within the United States.
High levels of physician professional satisfaction were found across multiple specialties and primary care in the closed, integrated practice setting of Southern California Permanente Medical Group.
This research brief describes the first comprehensive study of care for mild traumatic brain injury, or concussion, in the Military Health System, including patient characteristics, care settings, co-occurring conditions, and long-term care needs.
A RAND study, the first to examine care received by a census of active-duty service members diagnosed with mild traumatic brain injury in the Military Health System, assessed the number and characteristics of these patients (including deployment history and history of traumatic brain injury), their care settings, the treatments they received, co-occurring conditions, the duration of treatment, and the risk factors for requiring long-term care.
This pilot study will assess whether coupling social network visualizations with motivational interviewing can help Housing First participants transition away from homelessness and high-risk behaviors, such as substance use and risky sexual activity.
This report describes RAND's Health Care Payment and Delivery Simulation Model (PADSIM), developed to more effectively analyze the impacts of current and future reforms to provider payment policy, such as changes in how much providers are paid for their services and the degree to which payments are determined by the volume of services. PADSIM offers a systematic framework for quantifying such reforms and providers' responses to them.
As part of an effort to assist Chile in developing a strategic program to foster the development of the health information technology (health IT) sector over the next five to ten years, this report assesses the current state of health IT adoption and implementation in Chile, as well as the challenges and opportunities facing the sector over the coming years.
We developed a comprehensive four-step algorithm for identifying episodes of care for fall-related injuries and associated costs, using fee-for-service Medicare and Medicare Advantage health plan claims data for 2,011 patients from 5 medical groups between 2005 and 2009.
The Institute of Medicine has recently argued against a value index as a mechanism to address geographic variation in spending and instead promoted payment reform targeted at individual providers.
