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Letter from the Director 
 
Greetings! Welcome to CHBRP's Fall Quarterly Newsletter. 
 
With the first year of the legislative cycle officially wrapped up, CHBRP now turns its attention to preparing for the next round of legislative requests. Below, you'll see the final status of bills analyzed by CHBRP. For the ones that did not pass through the Legislature this year, we remain prepared to provide additional analysis should the topics appear in upcoming sessions. 

As part of CHBRP's effort to continually improve and refine our approach and processes, the Medical Effectiveness and Public Health team members met with CHBRP staff in September to discuss questions that arose during the last analytic season, and develop strategies when faced with similar questions in future years. The Cost team members, along with CHBRP's actuaries, will meet in November to have similar discussions. CHBRP staff are hard at work ensuring all of the templates and guidance document the Task Force uses to complete an analysis are updated and ready to go, and are working with our actuary to prepare our California Cost and Coverage Model for 2021 projections. 

CHBRP is pleased to be in conversations with the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD) regarding the All Payers Claims Database. As potential users of this data, CHBRP is looking forward to sharing how this information can complement or substitute our existing data sources. Usability and accessibility of this database will be important for many researchers and policy makers, and CHBRP is excited to contribute in the process. 
 
Until next time,
Garen 
CHBRP Student Assistants

We are delighted to welcome our newest group of Student Assistants! 

Liliane Nienstedt is a Graduate Student Assistant who is pursuing her MPP at UC Berkeley's Goldman School. Prior to moving to California, Liliane spent five years teaching middle-school science at a public school in Louisville, KY. There she was also involved with Teach Kentucky, with a nonprofit dedicated to increasing teacher recruitment in her district, and was an instructor in the University of Louisville's College of Education and Human Development. She has an undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Williams College, and is originally from Munich, Germany.

Daryl Mangosing, MPH joins CHBRP as a Graduate Student Assistant as he pursues a Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) degree at UC Berkeley School of Public Health. He has worked over three years at the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies and Prevention Research Center at UC San Francisco, where he drove communication efforts and disseminated HIV prevention and public health research. Prior to relocating to the Bay Area, he attended Tufts University in Boston and served as a Research Coordinator for the former Center for Global Public Health, Teaching Assistant in mobile health design, and Consultant at the Harvard School of Public Health. Daryl's research interests lies within the intersection of LGBTQ health disparities, identity and intersectionality, community engagement, and public health discourse.


Sabrina Woll is an Undergraduate Student Intern at CHBRP and is in her third year pursuing her undergraduate degree in Public Health at UC Berkeley. She has previously volunteered as an Emergency Medical Technician with the Berkeley Medical Reserve Corps, and was a research assistant for clinical trials for Alzheimer's disease. Sabrina is also a coordinator for The Suitcase Clinic, a humanitarian student organization dedicated to alleviating homelessness through offering health and social services to local underserved populations. 




Good Luck to CHBRP's Summer Interns!


CHBRP is grateful to our 2019 Summer Graduate Interns, Jeffrey Rollman, MPH, and Kyle Navarro, RN for all of their work this summer. Jeffrey updated various CHBRP resources, attended and summarized many stakeholder meetings, and gave an excellent presentation about the recently signed California Sate Budget. Kyle was instrumental in organizing the meetings with stakeholders CHBRP holds each summer and assisted in other projects. 



We wish Jeffrey and Kyle the best of luck as they continue pursuing their advanced degrees. Thank you for an excellent summer! 

2019 Bills - Final Status
 
CHBRP analyzed 16 bills in 2019. The reports, bill language as analyzed, follow up analyses, and Key Findings are available for each analysis at http://chbrp.org/completed_analyses/index.php

While many of the bills have been amended since CHBRP analyzed the versions as introduced, most if not all of each analysis is still relevant. Take a look at the analyses at the above link to see what impacts these bills may have on Californians. The following graphic shows the final status of bills that CHBRP analyzed in 2019.

Six of the bills analyzed by CHBRP were signed into law by Governor Newsom: AB 78 Actuarial Value (language chaptered as part of SB 78); AB 651 Air Ambulance Services; AB 744 Telehealth; SB 159 HIV Prophylaxis; SB 583 Clinical Trials; and SB 600 Fertility Preservation. 

DOUBLE-CLICK ON IMAGE TO EXPAND
Current as of October 13, 2019


CHBRP Stakeholder Meetings
 
Each summer, CHBRP staff meets with  each of its stakeholders, including legislative staff, health plans, and health plan associations to review the past  analytical  cycle and discuss any trends on the horizon. Below is a sampling of the stakeholders CHBRP met with this year. 

CHBRP appreciated hearing feedback about the analyses conducted this year, including hearing what pieces of the reports were useful and whether stakeholders had questions or concerns. Staff also heard about policy topics CHBRP stakeholders are paying attention to, such as Governor Newsom's bulk prescription drug purchasing executive order, Medicare for All proposals, and work being done to establish the All Payers Claims Database. 

 

CHBRP Presentations
 
Over the summer, Jeffrey Rollman, MPH, CHBRP's Summer Graduate Student Intern, gave an overview of the 2019-2020 California State Budget and highlighted items related to health coverage and delivery. This presentation was given to CHBRP's Task Force members on September 13, 2019. 

Additionally, CHBRP staff presented an introduction to CHBRP and an overview of CHBRP's analytic approach to faculty and students with the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. Since moving to the Berkeley Way West building in July 2019, CHBRP has worked to meet new colleagues and discover potential partnerships. 

Both of these presentations can be accessed on our website.

Task Force Spotlight: Steven Tally, PhD, MA

Dr. Steven Tally is the Director of Clinical Research at the Health Services Research Center (HSRC) in University of California San Diego (UCSD) and has worked at HSRC for about 15 years. He has worked with CHBRP for over 7 years now as a Senior Analyst for the Medical Effectiveness (ME) team along with his UCSD colleagues Dr. Sara McMenamin, Danielle Casteel, Sarah Hiller, and Naomi Hillery. Outside of CHBRP, Dr. Tally manages large state- or county-level evaluation projects, two of which are currently clinical trials on concussion and hydration in sports. The HSRC focuses on health policy, medical side-effects, quality of life, questionnaire development, and assessment. Not only does he enjoy the flexibility of working on many different kinds of projects simultaneously, but he is also proud of being a part of the HSRC from its inception of 4 staff to now being an off-campus center with over 35 staff.

Before landing at UCSD, Dr. Tally pursued his Bachelor's and Master's degrees at San Diego State University and then his Doctorate at University of California Irvine. After graduating in 2001, he worked as a statistical and methodological consultant in the private sector and served as research director and senior statistician for a national survey research firm. He then decided to come back to academia, which led him to running NIH-funded clinical trials for a group at UCSD that later morphed into the HSRC. "I think growing ourselves into a full fledge academic research center and being there from the beginning is one of the things I'm most proud of," Dr. Tally says. The HSRC conducts large, highly impactful state and county projects that evaluate the work of local clinics or programs and their sustainability and funding.    

Dr. Tally considers CHBRP one of the most rewarding aspects of his work and is encouraged that its bill analyses are being used tactfully by Legislators to vote on critical policies. As a Senior Analyst, he analyzes proposed bills and seeks evidence for effectiveness and validity from robust studies and determines how they apply to the goals of the bills. "The interesting thing about ME is that we look at effectiveness whether it's one person or a million people. The effectiveness shouldn't change. Then, that information gets applied as a weight used by both cost and public health to say, 'Okay, ME says this treatment is X effective, it's going to be given to this many people, here's how it would affect the public health, and here's how much it would cost.' So, it's kind of a linchpin of the entire analysis." Every year, he's excited for the UCSD team to become "masters" of new content areas, use their general knowledge and expertise to come up to speed quickly, and write knowledgeably to people who have been in the field for their entire career. "That's both the challenge and the reward right there for you."  
Task Force Spotlight: Riti Shimkhada, PhD

Dr. Shimkhada is a Senior Research Scientist at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, where she researches health and social disparities, immigrant health, and state-level health policies, to name a few. Recently she has worked on examining how individuals and organizations interact online by analyzing social media data. Additionally, she has been working on research involving the disaggregated race and ethnicity data for Asian and American Indian/Alaska Native population subgroups.

Dr. Shimkhada is passionate about how her work at the UCLA Center helps inform policy action. The Center has generated work that has helped shape policies, recommendations and best practices at the state and federal levels. The Center also produces the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), which is the largest state-based health survey in the nation. CHIS data is publicly available - in keeping with the Center's commitment to data that is transparent, democratized, and available to anyone who wishes to better understand their communities and enact change.

At CHBRP, Dr. Shimkhada serves as a Cost Lead, which she finds engaging and intellectually stimulating because it gives her the opportunity to dive deeply into research on a variety of topics. During the legislative season, she immerses herself fully in her bill analysis work, and enjoys the diversity of these assignments. She has worked on bills ranging from infertility mandates and cost sharing limits to bills focused on environmental factors and social determinants of health. She enjoys being able to work with CHBRP's dedicated, talented, and motivated team members from across the UC campuses.

While pursuing her PhD in epidemiology, Dr. Shimkhada became interested in health policy through her work with UCLA's Health Impact Assessment group (which is now part of the UCLA Center for Health Advancement). There, she studied the impact of policies external to the health sector on health outcomes. Dr. Shimkhada counts herself fortunate to have been able to take a number of health policy classes with faculty near and dear to CHBRP - Dr. Jerry Kominski and Dr. Ninez Ponce, both of whom have served as CHBRP's Cost Vice Chairs. She feels particularly luck to have incredible mentors in the policy field.

Dr. Shimkhada has had a diverse set of experiences in health policy. She has worked internationally and in the private sector, focusing on quality of care, as well as collaborating on work with esteemed faculty in the area of environmental health and decision-making under uncertainty. She is excited by how often she can connect the dots between her prior experiences and the work she does with CHBRP.

When asked what she enjoyed about her work with CHBRP, Dr. Shimkhada responded "Each year when we get feedback on our CHBRP work from legislators, it's gratifying to hear how well received our work is and how it is being use. On a personal level, I'm proud that I've been able to shape a career that is stimulating and exciting, but also one that allows for balance in all that I'm involved with."

  
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