State and Local Health Department Activities Related to Abortion: A Web Site Content Analysis.

CONTEXT: Recent legislation in states across the United States has required governmental health agencies to take on new and different roles in relation to abortion. While there has been media attention to health department roles in regulating abortion providers, there has been no systematic investigation of the range of activities in which state and local health departments are engaged. OBJECTIVE: To systematically investigate health department activities related to abortion. METHODS: We searched state health department Web sites of the 50 states and District of Columbia using key words such as "abortion" and "pregnancy termination". Two trained coders categorized 6093 documents using the 10 Essential Public Health Services (EPHS) framework. We then applied these methods to 671 local health department documents. SETTING: State and local health department Web sites. PARTICIPANTS: N/A. RESULTS: On average, states engaged in 5.1 of 10 Essential Services related to abortion. Most (76%-98%) state health departments engaged in activities to Monitor Health Status (EPHS1), Enforce Laws (EPHS6), and Evaluate Effectiveness, Accessibility, and Quality (EPHS9). Many (47%-69%) engaged in activities to Inform and Educate (EPHS3), Develop Policies (EPHS5), and Link to Services (EPHS7). A minority (4%-29%) engaged in activities to Diagnose and Investigate Health Problems (EPHS2), Mobilize Community Partnerships (EPHS4), and Assure Competent Workforce (EPHS8). No state engaged in Innovative Research (EPHS10). Few local health departments engaged in abortion-related activities. CONCLUSIONS: While most state health departments engage in abortion-related activities, they appear to reflect what the law requires rather than the range of core public health activities. Additional research is needed to assess whether these services meet quality standards for public health services and determine how best to support governmental health agencies in their growing tasks. These findings raise important questions about the role of public health agencies and professionals in defining how health departments should be engaging with abortion.

Preparing for a value-driven future.

At this month's staff meeting of your integrated primary care practice, the medical director makes an announcement: Your health system just signed a contract that includes a value-based payment (VBP) arrangement with a local managed care organization (MCO). The medical director suggests that this will lead to big changes in your practice because you will now focus on producing patient outcomes rather than on volume of care delivered. You wonder: What is a VBP arrangement? What kinds of patient outcomes? What does this mean for integrated care? and How do I help our organization succeed? Value-based care is the future, and it will impact the way that all of us practice. In value-based arrangements, the delivery of care fundamentally changes because payment for care shifts from our current fee-for-service model, in which provider productivity is key to financial survival, to payment for positive clinical outcomes where quality of care rules. And this change is happening now. In 2015, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced aggressive national VBP targets, with a goal of tying 50% of all Medicare payments to alternative payment models by the end of 2018 (New York State Department of Health, 2015). Since then, many states have adopted similar targets for their Medicaid programs in light of ongoing state budget challenges and unsustainable cost growth trends. As these changes take hold, health care providers are increasingly expected to make fundamental changes to service delivery, financial, and organizational operations. As health care providers, VBP will require us and our health centers to develop new skills, capacities, and systems for managing clinical, financial, and operational performance and risk. We must all make sure we understand and are ready to play our part in the transition to VBP. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).