The Fund supports networks of state health policy decision makers to help identify, inspire, and inform policy leaders.
The Milbank Memorial Fund supports two state leadership programs for legislative and executive branch state government officials committed to improving population health.
The Fund identifies and shares policy ideas and analysis to advance state health leadership, strong primary care, and sustainable health care costs.
Keep up with news and updates from the Milbank Memorial Fund. And read the latest blogs from our thought leaders, including Fund President Christopher F. Koller.
The Fund publishes The Milbank Quarterly, as well as reports, issues briefs, and case studies on topics important to health policy leaders.
The Milbank Memorial Fund is is a foundation that works to improve population health and health equity.
The articles listed below have been chosen by the editor-in-chief as featured articles.
At its centennial, in 2005, the Milbank Memorial Fund published this special issue of The Milbank Quarterly, reprinting articles from the journal’s… More
March 2019 Patrick M. Kreuger, Ilham A. Dehry, Virginia W. Chang,
Although it is well established that educational attainment improves health and longevity, the economic value of this benefit is unknown. Researchers estimate that the economic value of education for longer, healthier lives is comparable to or greater than the value of education for lifetime earnings. A template that assigns an economic value to the health benefits associated with education or other social determinants can allow policymakers to prioritize those interventions that yield the greatest value for the population. More
September 2018 Arijit Nandi, Deepa Jahagirdar, Michelle C. Dimitris, Jeremy A. Labrecque, Erin Strumpf, Jay S. Kaufman, Ilona Vincent, Efe Atabay, Sam Harper, Alison Earle, S. Jody Heymann,
This systematic review looks at the potential impacts of national paid leave policies in OECD countries on economic, social, and health outcomes. Researchers found that access to paid parental leave around the time of childbirth reduces rates of infant mortality. More generous paid leave in countries that offer unpaid or short duration of paid leave could help families strike a balance between the demands of earning income and attending to personal and family well-being. More
June 2018 Kayte Spector-Bagdady, Paul A. Lombardo,
This study sheds light on the US Public Health Service’s Guatemala STD experiments of the 1940s. The 1,300 people who had been intentionally exposed to pathogens in the experiments also played a role as unknowing secondary research subjects in biospeciman experiments that continued until at least 1957, write study authors Kayte Spector-Bagdady and Paul A. Lombardo from the University of Michigan and Georgia State University College of Law, who analyzed historical documents from that period. More
March 2018 Katherine Baicker, Heidi L. Allen, Bill J. Wright, Sarah L. Taubman, Amy N. Finkelstein,
This study takes advantage of Oregon’s 2008 Medicaid lottery to gauge the causal effects of Medicaid coverage on mental health care using a randomized-controlled design and drawing on primary and administrative data sources. Medicaid coverage was found to reduce the prevalence of undiagnosed depression by almost 50% and untreated depression by more than 60%. More
December 2017 Gilbert Gonzales, Carrie Henning-Smith,
Using data from a large multistate sample to compare barriers to care between cisgender, transgender, and gender nonconforming adults, researchers found that transgender and gender nonconforming adults experience barriers to health care for a variety of reasons, including discrimination, health insurance policies, employment, and public policy, or lack of awareness among health care providers on transgender-related health issues. More
September 2017 Erin Hobin, Bryan Bollinger, Jocelyn Sacco, Eli Liebman, Lana Vanderlee, Fei Zuo, Laura Rosella, Mary L'Abbé, Heather Manson, David Hammond,
Does nutrition labelling on the grocery store shelf help consumers make healthier food choices? Researchers looked at aggregated supermarket transaction data in three supermarket chains in Ontario and conducted exit interviews with shoppers from both intervention and control supermarkets to assess shoppers’ attitudes toward labelling. They found shoppers made small but significant shifts toward purchasing food with higher nutritional ratings, including foods with slightly less trans fat and sugar and more fiber and omega-3 fatty acids. More
June 2017 Huseyin Naci, Olivier J. Wouters, Radhika Gupta, John P.A. Ioannidis,
What is the clinical evidence on therapeutic agents that treat serious conditions and are eligible for Food and Drug Administration accelerated approval? This study is the first to provide a systematic evaluation of the evidence on drugs receiving this type of approval between 2000 and 2013. These drugs often quickly become part of standard treatment, despite shortcomings in their evidence base. More
March 2017 Benjamin D. Sommers, Caitlin L. McMurtry, Robert J. Blendon, John M. Benson, Justin M. Sayde,
While the Affordable Care Act reduced the number of uninsured Americans to historic lows and has particularly benefited lower-income families and minorities, insurance expansion on its own was not enough to bring about health care equity. Researchers found that lack of health insurance only explains a small to moderate portion of the disparities in health care access, affordability, and quality. More
December 2016 John A. Graves, Pranita Mishra,
Employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) is the predominant form of health insurance coverage in the United States, but little is known about transitions into and out of ESI or whether turnover has increased over time. The authors found that, between 2005 and 2013, adults who transitioned off ESI became likely to enroll in a non-group plan and were twice as likely to become uninsured. More