Ohio Health Policy News

The Health Policy Institute of Ohio has released a pair of reports designed to assist stakeholders and policymakers in taking lessons learned from promising health and human services pilot programs and developing policy and systems change.

The two reports, which examine how evidence-informed programs can be taken “from pilot to policy,” contain considerations for state and local policymakers and tools for program staff, philanthropy and other stakeholders.

“Approaches being taken by health and human services pilot programs can result in positive change in the lives of Ohioans, and policymakers can invest resources strategically,” the reports state.
 
To develop “From Pilot to Policy,” HPIO conducted 11 key-informant interviews with 13 experts in Ohio, including current and former policymakers, program staff and individuals involved with state policymaking. Insights shared in the key-informant interviews, as well as key quotes from the interviews, are included throughout these documents.

The Health Policy Institute of Ohio recently completed a final report summarizing the outcome and process evaluation results of CelebrateOne's Healthy Beginnings at Home (HBAH) housing stabilization pilot program, which is designed to improve maternal and infant health outcomes for families with low incomes in the Columbus area. A nine-page executive summary and a longer final report are available. 

The report includes five key findings and 16 recommendations and policy changes to strengthen HBAH replication and improve housing and health outcomes for pregnant women and their families. Insights from the evaluation can be valuable for other programs in Ohio that aim to improve maternal and infant health through housing interventions. 

This report builds upon the following work: 

• Healthy Beginnings at Home policy brief
• A New Approach to Reduce Infant Mortality and Achieve Equity: Policy Recommendations to Improve Housing, Transportation, Education and Employment- HPIO, under contract with the Legislative Service Commission 

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced last week that Ohio will play a role in a four–year, $350 million study that aims to reduce opioid deaths by 40 percent over three years (Source: “Ohio State to lead $65.9 million state study to help reduce opioid deaths,” Columbus Dispatch, April 18, 2019).

A consortium of Ohio colleges and communities led by Ohio State University is undertaking a sweeping effort to study how best to reduce opioid deaths in the state. Ohio State and its partners will receive a $65.9 million federal research grant for part of the project, with the first installment totaling $13 million.

Kentucky, New York and Massachusetts will also receive federal grants through what the federal government calls the HEALing Communities Study. By selecting Ohio, the Trump administration picked an epicenter in the epidemic. In 2017, 4,293 Ohioans died from opioid-related overdoses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Only West Virginia had a higher rate of deaths per 100,000 people.

The Ohio study will focus on 19 Ohio counties: Allen, Ashtabula, Athens, Brown, Cuyahoga, Darke, Franklin, Guernsey, Greene, Hamilton, Huron, Jefferson, Lucas, Morrow, Ross, Scioto, Stark, Williams and Wyandot. The Ohio consortium will bring together experts from six universities — Ohio State, Cincinnati, Case Western Reserve, Ohio, Toledo and Wright State — as well as leaders from state agencies, Nationwide Children’s Hospital and other community organizations. Gov. Mike DeWine’s administration is also participating.

The state of Ohio announced this week $2.4 million in awards to 12 organizations working on technologies meant to address the opioid crisis. (Source: “Ohio awards $2.4 million to 12 groups using tech to fight opioid abuse,” Crain’s Cleveland, Sept. 12, 2018).

The Ohio Third Frontier program will give $200,000 to each of the 12 winners, chosen from 50 applicants, to continue advancing their technologies. The awards were made as part of the Third Frontier’s Ohio Opioid Technology Challenge program, which aims to fight opioid abuse and create high-tech jobs at the same time.

In December 2017 the Third Frontier Commission awarded $10 million to seven organizations as part of the program's first phase, which focused on funding "bold and creative ideas from hundreds of researchers, caregivers, service providers and citizens from across Ohio, the U.S. and the world," according to a news release.

The second phase focuses on technical solutions to opioid issues. The third phase, which is scheduled to begin in late September, is intended to provide funding to refine the most promising projects and help turn them into market-ready products.

Ohio awarded $10 million in grants Thursday to six companies and a university that have come up with innovative scientific ideas to address the national opioid epidemic (Source: “State grants $10M for new ways to fight opioid scourge,” Associated Press via Columbus Dispatch, Dec. 8, 2017).

The Ohio Third Frontier Commission awarded the grants for ideas that include development of pain management alternatives and a mobile app to improve addiction treatment.

The seven grant winners emerged from a field of 44 initial projects submitted by hospitals, universities and various medical device, software and pharmaceutical developers. About $2 million less was awarded than the commission had made available.

A statewide partnership with the national Crisis Text Line has resulted in 243 "active rescues" of Ohioans in danger of harming themselves or others, state and local mental health officials said this week (Source: “Crisis texting hotline has been successful in Ohio, officials say,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, Jan. 11, 2017).

The Crisis Text Line pairs people in stressful situations with trained crisis counselors via text message. In Ohio, people can text "4HOPE" to 741741 and will receive a response within 5 minutes. Texts that mention suicide or other keywords are bumped ahead in the queue.

Counselors have fielded 33,000 messages from Ohio in the past three years, mostly from people younger than age 25. Crisis Text Line, a privately funded nonprofit, offers its service for free nationwide. It collects aggregated data, without personally identifiable information, to find general trends from people seeking help. In Ohio, the top three text subjects are depression, suicidal thoughts or behaviors and stress. Lublin said bullying, friend issues and physical abuse are more prevalent in Ohio than other states.

The Stark County Mental Health and Addiction Recovery Board piloted the service in 2014 through a state grant. State officials began working with Crisis Text Line in September and has since launched a marketing campaign to raise awareness of the free service.  "This is something where people took a step and it was able to be brought to a greater scale," Tracy Plouck, director of the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, said.

The Governor’s Office of Health Transformation and the Ohio Department of Health today released a draft of the 2016 state health assessment.

The state health assessment is a comprehensive and actionable picture of health and wellbeing in Ohio. The purpose of the state health assessment is to:

• Inform identification of priorities for the upcoming state health improvement plan
• Provide a template for state agencies and local partners (uniform set of categories and metrics to use in related assessments)

The report includes information from several sources in order to provide a comprehensive picture of health and wellbeing in Ohio. Using existing data, this document presents data profiles on health outcomes and a broad range of factors that impact health outcomes, healthcare spending and disparities. These data profiles are followed by summaries of new information collected for this assessment, including qualitative information gathered through key informant interviews and regional forums. The Health Policy Institute of Ohio was commissioned to facilitate the state health assessment process and produce the publication.

The public is invited to provide input on the state health assessment until noon on July 5, 2016.

The final state health assessment is expected to be released later this summer, followed by the release of the 2016 state health improvement plan later this year.

The Governor’s Office of Health Transformation today released a reported titled “Improving population health planning in Ohio.”

The report, created by the Health Policy Institute of Ohio, provides recommendations for strengthening Ohio’s population health planning and implementation infrastructure and outlines ways to align population health priority areas, measures, objectives and evidence-based strategies with the design and implementation of the patient-centered medical home (PCMH) model.

HPIO was commissioned by the Governor’s Office of Health Transformation (OHT), the Ohio Department of Medicaid and the Ohio Department of Health in September 2015 to facilitate stakeholder engagement and provide guidance on improving population health planning in Ohio.

Ohio's performance on population health outcomes has declined relative to other states over the past two decades, and Ohio has significant disparities for many health outcomes by race, income and geography. Ohio also spends more on health care than most other states.   “Part of the challenge is the lack of coordination across ten state-level health improvement plans and  110 local health district and 170 hospital community health assessments/plans,” according to an OHT release. 

In December 2014, the federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation awarded Ohio a four-year $75 million State Innovation Model, or SIM, test grant for implementation of episode-based payments and rollout of a state-wide PCMH model over a four-year period. As part of that funding, Ohio must also develop a population health plan.

OHT will coordinate the implementation of the HPIO recommendations in 2016.

A coalition of interest groups, businesses and social services agencies laid out a plan last week to eliminate food deserts in Ohio by promoting grocery development in underserved areas of the state. (Source: “Package to eradicate Ohio's 'food deserts' is delivered at Statehouse,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, Feb. 12, 2015). 

The Ohio Healthy Food Financing Task Force presented a report at the Statehouse outlining 10 recommendations to state policymakers.

The Task Force is comprised of nearly 50 members, including representatives from the city of Cleveland, JobsOhio, the United Way and the Ohio Grocers Association, several grocery store operators and the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. 

Six Ohio health systems have formed a new nonprofit collaborative to reduce costs while delivering quality care to large populations across the state (Source: “Six health systems form statewide collaborative,” Dayton Daily News, Jan. 13, 2015).

The newly formed Midwest Health Collaborative, with more than 100,000 employees statewide, will be led by a board comprised of the chief executives of the six health networks, which include Dayton-based Premier and TriHealth; the Cleveland Clinic; Aultman in Canton; OhioHealth in Columbus; and ProMedica in Toledo.

The collaborative will focus on identifying the most prevalent health issues in individual communities and determining the most efficient and cost-effective ways to address those issues in a standardized way by sharing data analysis, health tracking tools and best practices for managing population health.

A similar partnership launched in 2013, called Health Innovations Ohio, involves University Hospitals in Cleveland, Summa Health System in Akron, Mount Carmel Health System in Columbus and Catholic Health Partners in Cincinnati.