More SHARE Grants Awarded
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's State Health Access Reform Evaluation (SHARE) program supports research that addresses issues states face as they work to improve health coverage and access.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation announced it has awarded nine more State Health Access Reform Evaluation (SHARE) program grants. These support research on issues faced by states as they working on improving health coverage and access; these new grants are focused on topics related to state-level implementation of the Affordable Care Act.
"States have about 18 months remaining to prepare for a considerable expansion in the number of residents eligible for Medicaid and for the launch of state health insurance exchanges under the ACA," said Lynn Blewett, Ph.D., director of SHARE. "Even in those states making the most rapid progress, there is still considerable work to be done. State officials and their staff are hungry for data that will shed light on what approaches may best meet the unique needs of their residents."
The foundation began SHARE in 1997. Its main goals are to develop a coordinated approach to the study of health reform issues from a state perspective and to produce findings on the subject for state and federal policy-makers and agencies. These new grants are the third round of SHARE-funded research. Among the recipients are research projects involving rural implementation of Medicaid expansions, Medicaid program design for low-income, childless adults, and evaluating access, quality, health, and cost aspects of coordinated care organizations in Oregon.
"An increasing focus of RWJF's work in the last two years has been to fund research aimed at helping states identify, develop, and share successful health reform strategies," said Katherine Hempstead, Ph.D., senior program officer at the foundation. "We've established an ambitious goal of seeing that nearly all Americans have stable, affordable health insurance coverage by 2020, and achieving it is contingent upon states successfully implementing health reform."
Technical support for the grantees' research will be provided by the State Health Access Data Assistance Center, an RWJF-funded research center in the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota.