Health Policy and Reform

Knowledge is half the battle: To combat the growing spread of the type of bacteria resistant to common antibiotics, dubbed superbugs, it's critical to know when and where infections are occurring.

In new state rankings of adult obesity by the Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), Mississippi was out front, with 34.4 percent of its adults considered obese. All told, nine of the 10 states with the highest adult obesity rates are in the South.

Last week, Burness Communications marked its 25^th anniversary as a company. 

We started in 1986, supporting The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Council on Foundations, working out of an accountant’s office in the Landow Building in Bethesda, Maryland.  Twenty-five years later, a lot has happened; in fact, to put it more proactively, we have helped make a lot happen. 

Kids Coverage Survives the Recession, but Wide Differences between States Persist

On February 4, 2009, in the midst of a severe recession, President Obama signed legislation reauthorizing the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), preserving health insurance coverage for millions of kids in the U.S.

Two years later, a new state-by-state scorecard reveals that the CHIP reauthorization and Medicaid expansions in the economic stimulus bill succeeded in preserving and, in some states, even expanding health coverage for kids, in spite of the economic downturn. That’s the good news.

But The Commonwealth Fund scorecard (the Fund is a Burness client) also shows a more complex picture: some kids face very different health care realities than others – and there’s plenty of room for improvement. Among the states, wide gaps persist: gaps in coverage rates, affordability of care, the delivery of preventive care, and, ultimately, children’s opportunity to lead healthy lives.

Read the report, Securing a Healthy Future: The Commonwealth Fund State Scorecard of Child Health System Performance, 2011