Human Services

Experience during the first six months of the pandemic shows that the risks of Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) beneficiaries contracting COVID-19 and subsequent hospitalization and mortality vary significantly by demographic characteristics, health status, and nursing home residence. There are several factors that indicate significantly elevated risk.

This case study focuses on how a fatherhood program in rural Ohio—ForeverDads—reaches a subpopulation of fathers through partnerships with area substance use disorder treatment programs. Key lessons and considerations include how human services programs can promote father engagement by:

This project was a collaborative effort by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) and the Office of Women’s Health (OWH). This work examines how investments by the U.S.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted stark health disparities among Black, Hispanic, Native American, and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander populations in several areas, including infections, hospitalizations, death rates, and vaccination rates.

Social capital – or the value that arises from connections, networks, and relationships – can help human services programs improve participant outcomes. The U.S.

Interviews with program administrators and frontline workers across a range of human services programs early in the COVID-19 pandemic provided great insight into the tradeoffs and relative advantages of choosing virtual platforms to administer services from.

Interviews with program administrators and frontline workers across a range of human services programs early in the COVID-19 pandemic provided key takeaways to help promote effective, accessible, and equitable virtual service delivery.

Interviews with program administrators and frontline workers across a range of human services programs early in the COVID-19 pandemic offered rich information about how well virtual service delivery worked for different types of participants.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many human services programs rapidly shifted their service delivery from primarily or exclusively in person to mostly or entirely virtual (via phone, video call, text, email, etc.) with varying degrees of perceived success. Some services (e.g., emergency shelter, distribution of food/diapers) simply must be administered in person.

This report to Congress analyzed 10 years of data to look at trends in emergency department utilization at the national and state levels. The report analyzes three categories of utilization: