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This post examines a growing COVID-19 vaccine gap in Red and Blue America, with the share of the population that have been fully vaccinated in counties that voted for President Biden in 2020 increasing more rapidly than the share in counties that voted for President Trump.
Drug overdose deaths rose during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic, with some of the biggest jumps occurring among people of color. This analysis breaks out drug overdose deaths by race and ethnicity for the first nine months of 2020, to the same period in each of the two prior years. It also looks at access to care issues and recent and pending legislation aimed at addressing the nation’s substance use and mental health challenges.
We reviewed the websites and other official state sources for all 50 states and D.C. to see which are providing data on COVID-19 breakthrough cases, hospitalizations and deaths, how regularly, and what those data may tell us.
Analysis of characteristics of children under 12 in the U.S. to help inform COVID-19 vaccination efforts when they become eligible.
On June 23, 2021, a circuit court decision in Missouri put the state’s expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in limbo. This decision, if upheld, has implications for coverage in the state as well as the availability of federal financing to cover the cost.
This post looks at a new contactless method of providing medication abortions and now this can be and has been used in response to the pandemic. The post also examines state policies that act as barriers to implementing these new protocols.
Updated Data on State Parental Consent Laws for COVID-19 Vaccination Available Here. With the recent authorization of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for adolescents, ages 12-15, a group that totals almost 17 million, the next phase of the U.S. vaccination effort has begun.
While some have praised the most recent U.S. donation announcement as an important development, others have said the U.S. could do much more, pointing to the large supply of doses the U.S. is building up and the slowing demand for vaccinations in the country. In this policy watch, we sought to put the U.S. pledge of 80 million doses in further context.
Although attention in current federal actions is largely focused on Medicare and private insurance drug prices, federal legislation also has been recently introduced or enacted that would affect Medicaid prescription drug policy.
Providing paid time off to employees to get and recover from any side effects could help boost vaccination rates. Overall, nearly three in ten (28%) employed adults who not yet ready to get the vaccine say that they would be more likely to get the COVID-19 vaccine if their employer gave them paid time off to get vaccinated and recover from any side effects.
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