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See What's Happening
With The California Health Benefits Review Program!
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Academic Rigor On A Legislature's Timeline |
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Welcome to CHBRP's Summer Newsletter.
I am grateful to celebrate my 11th anniversary as CHBRP’s Director this month, and I continue to be awed by the many talents and deep commitment of the entire CHBRP Team to fulfill our mission and to find new and improved ways of conducting our work, refine and improve our methodology, and deepen our analytic approach.
This Summer and Fall, there are numerous workgroups that are focusing on reviewing methods and considering new approaches. As the two-year legislative session approaches the finish line, CHBRP continues to track numerous pieces of legislation that we recently analyzed (please see below). We continue fielding and responding to inquiries from the Legislature, stakeholders, and the media. We are also about halfway through our annual external stakeholder meetings, and they have been very helpful. We learn a ton from the insights and feedback from the interested parties who read and leverage our work. We also are learning from a terrific cohort of students who are working with us on individual and group projects, and a new staff member who has joined us full-time for the year after working with us as a student assistant prior to graduating from UC Berkeley.
Finally, this newsletter recaps some recent successful dissemination of CHBRP’s research and analysis in peer-reviewed journals and at a major annual national health services/policy conference. We also have begun curating some free online health policy-related events/webinars that our readers may be interested in. But recharging our batteries is critical for everyone. I hope that all of our readers get an opportunity to enjoy the Summer and the change of pace that long, warm Summer days offer.
Until next time,
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Completed Analyses and Status in 2022 |
In 2022, the Legislature requested that CHBRP analyze 18 bills. Since CHBRP's last newsletter, two more analyses were completed, SB 1338 CARE Court Programs and SB 1473 COVID-19 Therapeutics. The following chart shows the current status of these bills, with each column indicating where the bills are currently located. |
Red = Failed to move forward, Blue = Passed out of the House/Committee, Gold = Current location
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All completed analyses are available on CHBRP's website.
As these bills move through Committees, CHBRP publishes an "Amendment Status" document ahead of key hearings that indicates the portions of CHBRP analyses that remain relevant after amendments are made to analyzed bills. This document has been recently updated and made available on CHBRP's website. CHBRP will also notify readers when a new version is posted via our email listserv. CHBRP remains available to answer questions about completed analyses.
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Annual Stakeholder Meetings |
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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.
CHBRP appreciates hearing feedback about the analyses conducted this year, including hearing which pieces of the reports were useful, whether stakeholders had questions or concerns, and policy topics CHBRP stakeholders are paying attention to.
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Welcoming our 2022 Summer Interns |
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We are excited to welcome our 2022 Summer Interns: Alondra Peregrino, Madison Olmsted, and Nadav Senensieb. CHBRP is incredibly grateful to have them supporting our many summer projects. |
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Alondra Peregrino is a Health Career Connection Undergraduate Student Intern at CHBRP. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Public Health at UC Berkeley with a minor in Public Policy. As a research assistant at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, Alondra aided with multiple studies aimed at improving community health and promoting health equity. She served as a co-director of the student organization Chicanx/Latinx in Health Education which dedicates itself to providing health education to the Latinx community of the Bay Area. Alondra also interned at Mission Neighborhood Health Center, where she was responsible for assisting in outreach and enrollment efforts to provide access to healthcare to the underserved populations of San Francisco’s Mission District. |
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Madison Olmsted is a Graduate Student Intern with CHBRP and a Master of Public Policy student at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, focusing on health policy. Prior to pursuing her MPP, she worked as a Public Health Advisor at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where she advanced state-level health equity initiatives, coordinated community partnerships, and led a communications team. Madison is motivated to use a policy-level approach to advance health equity and improve health systems for all. She holds a B.A. in Biological Sciences from the University of Chicago. |
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Nadav Senensieb is a Graduate Student Intern with CHBRP pursuing an MPH in Health Policy and Management from UCLA with an emphasis in Health Policy. Prior to beginning UCLA’s MPH program, Nadav was the Supervisor of Billing Operations for a private infertility practice in Thousand Oaks, CA. During those 4 years, Nadav discovered his passion for health policy and is very excited to dive further into the field this summer with CHBRP. Nadav received his undergraduate degree from Georgetown University with a B.S. in Business Administration majoring in Operations Management and Finance. |
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CHBRP has recently published or updated the following documents, available on CHBRP's website: |
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In June, CHBRP's Principal Analyst Adara Citron presented at AcademyHealth's Annual Research Meeting (ARM). Adara's presentation discussed findings from two of CHBRP's 2021 analyses (AB 97 Insulin Affordability and SB 473 Insulin Cost Sharing Caps), comparing the impacts of cost-sharing caps with deductible prohibitions for insulin on utilization and out-of-pocket costs. The slides are available on CHBRP's website.
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Policy Considerations for Routine Screening for Adverse Childhood Events (ACEs) |
CHBRP is thrilled to announce the publication of a peer-reviewed article in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine. This journal article summarizes findings regarding key issues in ACEs screening and potential impacts of California's recently signed law on screening utilization and expenditures. The article is response to the passage of Senate Bill 428 in 2021, the ACEs Equity Act, which mandates commercial insurance coverage of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) screening in addition to ACEs screening already covered for the state's Medicaid enrollees, and is largely built upon CHBRP's analysis of SB 428 in the Spring of 2021.
Congratulations to coauthors Riti Shimkhada, Jacqueline Miller, Elizabeth Magnan, Marykate Miller, Janet Coffman and Garen Corbett.
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CHBRP's colleagues from other organizations host various webinars, here are a few that may interest our readers:
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UC Berkeley's School of Public Health presents: Ensuring Occupational Health Research Benefits All Workers on August 3, 2022, at 12:00 PM. For more information and to register click here.
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UC Center Sacramento presents: The Policy Implications of the Fall Elections on September 28, 2022, at 12:00 PM. For more information and to register click here.
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UC Center Sacramento presents: Protecting Public Health: Data, Models, and Policy on November 2, 2022, at 12:00 PM. For more information and to register click here.
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Each newsletter, CHBRP features Task Force members and the important work they do outside of CHBRP. See more information about all of our Task Force members on CHBRP's website. |
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Dr. Aimee Moulin is an Emergency Physician and a Professor at UC Davis. Duly appointed to the Department of Psychiatry and the Department of Emergency Medicine, Dr. Moulin serves as Behavioral Health Director. She is boarded in both Emergency Medicine and Addiction Medicine. Dr. Moulin is one of the founders and directors of the California Bridge Program, which supplies technical assistance for hospitals to provide access to substance abuse disorder treatment through Emergency Departments.
Dr. Moulin finds the opportunity to directly help people to be the most rewarding part of her work. She is passionate about providing accessible, timely, and comprehensive treatment to people with substance abuse disorders. In the Emergency Department, she sees the urgency of providing care for those struggling with addiction. She believes that as a physician she has a responsibility to provide life-saving treatment for substance use disorder as quickly as possible, therefore her team identifies patients in the Emergency Department who may need treatment and begins their care immediately by providing the care that would typically not be started until someone visited a specialized clinic. The accomplishment Dr. Moulin is most proud of is bringing the first substance use navigator into her emergency department and starting the journey of transforming the methods to treat addiction.
The work Dr. Moulin has done in the Emergency Department is what motivated her to become involved in health policy analysis and research. She sees firsthand some of the challenges that her patients face, inspiring her to work on improving health care at the policy level. Health policy work helps Dr. Moulin stay focused and hopeful even when the work in the ED is challenging, exhausting, or discouraging.
Being an avid consumer of CHBRP’s analyses for several years, Dr. Moulin joined the Task Force as a faculty member of the Public Health team in 2021. During her first year with CHBRP, she worked on two analyses. She found the opportunity to dive deep into new health policy topics exciting. She appreciated the process of going from reading the legislation for the first time to doing extensive research to producing an analysis. Dr. Moulin especially enjoyed the chance to collaborate with other brilliant and motivated experts in the field.
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University of California, Berkeley
MC 3116
Berkeley, CA 94720-3116
(510) 664-5306
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