Nadereh Pourat, associate director at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and professor of health policy and management at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, and Emmeline Chuang, associate professor at the UC Berkeley School of Social Welfare, have received a $200,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The researchers will explore how California counties responded to COVID-19 under the Whole Person Care Medicaid Pilot Program.
The grant will expand on efforts to evaluate Whole Person Care, or WPC, a Medicaid program launched in 2016 by the California Department of Health Care Services, which aims to provide coordinated health care and social services for patients with complex needs, such as those who are homeless, have mental health and chronic conditions, or have been recently incarcerated. Researchers will look at whether WPC improved health outcomes and service delivery for enrolled patients. The findings will be used to inform future efforts by service providers and policymakers to improve Medicaid beneficiaries’ quality of care and health outcomes.
“WPC pilots played a significant role in many California counties’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic by helping them leverage cross-sector relationships and resources, such as outreach providers and housing services,” said Pourat, who serves as the lead evaluator of the WPC program under contract with the California Department of Health Care Services. “The program targets many at-risk populations, including those who are homeless and needed shelter or those with complex conditions who needed extra support during the lockdown.”
The grant to UCLA is one of five new awards totaling $2 million from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Systems for Action research program. Researchers hope the findings will provide important insights into how organizations from different sectors work together to improve population health outcomes and health equity in the context of COVID-19.
Read the full news release.
