The Retaining Employment and Talent After Injury/Illness Network (RETAIN) Demonstration: Impacts Two Months After Enrollment

The Retaining Employment and Talent after Injury/Illness Network (RETAIN) demonstration was a collaborative effort by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and the Social Security Administration (SSA) to help workers stay in the labor force after they experience an injury or illness. The goal of RETAIN was to implement and test programs that used early-intervention stay-at-work/return-to-work (SAW/RTW) strategies to help adult workers who had recently experienced the onset or exacerbation of an injury or illness that challenged their ability to work. In Phase 1, which began in 2018, DOL awarded funds to eight state agencies to develop and pilot test programs to help those who experience a potentially disabling condition stay at work or return to work. In Phase 2, which began in 2021, DOL awarded approximately $103 million in cooperative agreements to five states (Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Ohio, and Vermont) to continue and expand their programs. The five RETAIN programs began enrolling participants in late 2021 and early 2022 through mid-May 2024.

Under contract to SSA, Mathematica is conducting an independent evaluation of the RETAIN programs. Mathematica’s evaluation has several components, including rigorous assessments of the programs’ implementation and their impacts on enrollee service use, employment, and health in the months immediately following enrollment, as well as impacts on outcomes in the year after enrollment.

This report presents the five RETAIN programs’ early impacts on enrollee service use, employment, and health; it is the first of two reports on the programs’ impacts. The report findings are based on Mathematica’s analysis of data from a follow-up survey of RETAIN enrollees that Mathematica conducted about two months after enrollment. The survey asked enrollees about their use of SAW/RTW services early work- and health-related outcomes. Each RETAIN program used a random assignment study design, such that some enrollees were in a treatment group that could use RETAIN services and the others were in a control group that could use limited or no services besides those typically available in the community. To estimate each program’s early impacts on enrollee outcomes, we compared the outcomes of treatment and control group enrollees as reported in the early follow-up survey. In a future report, the final evaluation report, we will present the programs’ impacts on enrollee outcomes in the year after enrollment.