Highlights from our latest stroll through the Evidence in Action team’s blog feed...
By the Numbers: Our Progress in Digitizing Health Care (Health Affairs blog)
For National Health IT Week, the current and former national coordinators for health information technology, Karen DeSalvo and Vindell Washington, review the progress in expanding the use of electronic health records. (And while we’re on the subject, check out Mathematica’s new podcast on America’s investment in health IT.)
Over the past seven years, the United States has seen a historic health IT transformation, moving from a primarily paper-based health system to one where virtually everyone has a digital footprint of their care because of the dramatic uptake of electronic health records.
Beware Hyped Claims of WMD (Ed Impact blog)
In the new book Weapons of Math Destruction, author Cathy O’Neil argues that the increasing influence of algorithms and mathematical models in decision-making is dangerous and creates a “toxic cocktail for democracy.” Mathematica’s Alex Resch counters O’Neil’s claims about teacher value-added models, which measure the impact that teachers have on student test scores.
I’ve built and used these models myself for teachers in the District of Columbia and Charleston, South Carolina. It’s an important public service to be on the lookout for uses that harm teachers or students. The problem is, many of the book’s claims about value-added models are hyped and don’t stand up to scrutiny.
Dialing for Data: Enterprise Edition (Development Impact blog)
Markus Goldstein, a lead economist at the World Bank, reviews a new paper on a data collection experiment in South Africa that compares the impact of conducting surveys by phone and in person.
Surveys are expensive. And, in sub-Saharan Africa in particular, a big part of that cost is logistics—fuel, car-hire and the like. So with the increasing mobile phone coverage more folks are thinking about, and actually using, phones in lieu of in-person interviews to complete surveys. The question is: what does that do to data quality?
James Lloyd, director of the Strategic Society Centre in London, outlines suggestions to help academics achieve policy change. He writes with a U.K. audience in mind, but offers tips that can be applied in any country.
The biggest barrier to evidence-based policymaking is still arguably that so much research sits beyond the reach of policymakers behind journal pay-walls. … [I]f you’re determined to change policy using a piece of your research, it really needs to be available in full, for free, for everyone in policymaking to access, online, at any time. Anything else will undermine your chances of achieving policy change.
Can Evidence Improve America's Schools? (Flypaper blog)
Michael J. Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, looks at the decades-long efforts to establish research-based practices in American schools to improve teaching and learning.
Education remains a field in which habit, intuition, and incumbency continue to play at least as large a role as research and data analysis. The question is why, and what might be done about it.
Beyond Just a ‘Phase:’ Acknowledging the Role of Diversity and Culture in Mental Health (RWJF New Connections blog)
Tara Earl, a researcher with Abt Associates, relates her brother’s struggle with schizophrenia and discusses the challenges that researchers, policymakers, and practitioners face in trying to understand mental health disorders.
As we move towards building a holistic Culture of Health, we must not forget to include mental health. We must also intentionally acknowledge the role of diversity and culture. In order to be successful in this endeavor, we need to have a shared understanding about what is required to deliver the right type of care to the right people at the right time.
