Health and political economy: building a new common sense in the United States.

The prevailing economic paradigm, characterized by free market thinking and individualistic cultural narratives, has deeply influenced contemporary society in recent decades, including health in the United States. This paradigm, far from being natural, is iteratively intertwined with politics, social group stratification, and norms, together shaping what is known as political economy. The consequences are starkly evident in health, with millions of lives prematurely lost annually in the United States.

The Nation's First Publicly Recognized Overdose Prevention Centers: Lessons Learned in New York City.

In November of 2021, multiple factors converged to create a window of opportunity to open overdose prevention centers (OPCs) at two existing syringe service programs (SSPs) in New York City (NYC). Political will exists in NYC, particularly toward the end of the de Blasio administration's term, and the NYC Health Department worked to garner additional support from local and state elected officials given the dire need to address the overdose crisis. This coincided with readiness on the part of one of the NYC SSP providers, OnPoint NYC, to open and operate OPC services.

Collateral Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The New York City Experience.

Objective: To adapt an existing surveillance system to monitor the collateral impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on health outcomes in New York City across 6 domains: access to care, chronic disease, sexual/reproductive health, food/economic insecurity, mental/behavioral health, and environmental health.

Design: Epidemiologic assessment. Public health surveillance system.

Increases In COVID-19 Vaccination Among NYC Municipal Employees After Implementation Of Vaccination Requirements.

In July 2021 New York City (NYC) instituted a requirement for all municipal employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or undergo weekly testing. The city eliminated the testing option November 1 of that year. We used general linear regression to compare changes in weekly primary vaccination series completion among NYC municipal employees ages 18-64 living in the city and a comparison group of all other NYC residents in this age group during May-December 2021.

Developing a Model to Predict High Health Care Utilization Among Patients in a New York City Safety Net System.

Background: Health care facilities use predictive models to identify patients at risk of high future health care utilization who may benefit from tailored interventions. Previous predictive models that have focused solely on inpatient readmission risk, relied on commercial insurance claims data, or failed to incorporate social determinants of health may not be generalizable to safety net hospital populations. To address these limitations, we developed a payer-agnostic risk model for patients receiving care at the largest US safety net hospital system.

Return on Investment of the COVID-19 Vaccination Campaign in New York City.

Importance: New York City, an early epicenter of the pandemic, invested heavily in its COVID-19 vaccination campaign to mitigate the burden of disease outbreaks. Understanding the return on investment (ROI) of this campaign would provide insights into vaccination programs to curb future COVID-19 outbreaks.

Objective: To estimate the ROI of the New York City COVID-19 vaccination campaign by estimating the tangible direct and indirect costs from a societal perspective.

Local Legal Strategies to Increase Vaccination During the COVID-19 Pandemic - Lessons from New York City.

Vaccine mandates played a critical role in the success of New York City's COVID-19 response. By relying on evidence as a substantive basis for the mandates and adhering to procedural requirements and precedent, New York City leveraged its position and expertise as a local governmental authority to devise mandatory vaccine policies that withstood numerous legal challenges. New York City's experience highlights the role of municipal government in mounting a meaningful public health response, and the strategies adopted by NYC may provide a blueprint for municipalities around the world facing the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the threat of future public health emergencies.

The effect of a proof-of-vaccination requirement, incentive payments, and employer-based mandates on COVID-19 vaccination rates in New York City: a synthetic-control analysis.

Background: COVID-19 vaccines have been available to all adults in the USA since April, 2021, but many adults remain unvaccinated. We aimed to assess the joint effect of a proof-of-vaccination requirement, incentive payments, and employer-based mandates on rates of adult vaccination in New York City (NYC).

Methods: We constructed a synthetic control group for NYC composed of other counties in the core of large, metropolitan areas in the USA.

First 2 Months of Operation at First Publicly Recognized Overdose Prevention Centers in US.

This quality improvement study investigates outcomes and services used during the first 2 months of operation at the first 2 publicly recognized US overdose prevention centers.

Toward a new standard of health for immigrants in the United States.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused massive disruptions in social life, created significant morbidity and mortality, and has exacerbated pre-existing disparities in health and welfare. In the United States, the pandemic has also catalyzed debate regarding how our health and social services infrastructure can be improved and bolstered going forward. An important part of these discussions revolves around the vulnerability experienced by immigrant populations during the pandemic.

Lives saved and hospitalizations averted by COVID-19 vaccination in New York City: a modeling study.

Background: Following the start of COVID-19 vaccination in New York City (NYC), cases have declined over 10-fold from the outbreak peak in January 2020, despite the emergence of highly transmissible variants. We evaluated the impact of NYC's vaccination campaign on saving lives as well as averting hospitalizations and cases.

Methods: We used an age-stratified agent-based model of COVID-19 to include transmission dynamics of Alpha, Gamma, Delta and Iota variants as identified in NYC.