Publications by authors named "Katherine Baicker"

Importance: Access to appropriate postpartum care is essential for improving maternal health outcomes and promoting maternal health equity.

Objective: To analyze the impact of the Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP) home visiting program on use of routine and emergency postpartum care.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This study was a secondary analysis of a randomized clinical trial that enrolled eligible participants between 2016 and 2020 to receive NFP or usual care from a South Carolina Medicaid program.

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Objective: To evaluate the effect of an intensive nurse home visiting program on postpartum contraceptive use and birth spacing among individuals with a first pregnancy who were eligible for Medicaid insurance in South Carolina.

Methods: We conducted a nonblinded, randomized controlled trial of the Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP), an established intensive home visiting program that provides prenatal and postpartum home visits through 2 years after childbirth. The trial included patients who were eligible for Medicaid insurance with a first pregnancy at less than 28 weeks of gestation between April 1, 2016, and March 17, 2020, who were followed up through 2 years after childbirth.

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Objectives: To investigate whether health insurance generated improvements in cardiovascular risk factors (blood pressure and hemoglobin A (HbA) levels) for identifiable subpopulations, and using machine learning to identify characteristics of people predicted to benefit highly.

Design: Secondary analysis of randomized controlled trial.

Setting: Medicaid insurance coverage in 2008 for adults on low incomes (defined as lower than the federal-defined poverty line) in Oregon who were uninsured.

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In 2008, Oregon expanded its Medicaid program using a lottery, creating a rare opportunity to study the effects of Medicaid coverage using a randomized controlled design (Oregon Health Insurance Experiment). Analysis showed that Medicaid coverage lowered the risk of depression. However, this effect may vary between individuals, and the identification of individuals likely to benefit the most has the potential to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the Medicaid program.

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Scientific evidence regularly guides policy decisions, with behavioural science increasingly part of this process. In April 2020, an influential paper proposed 19 policy recommendations ('claims') detailing how evidence from behavioural science could contribute to efforts to reduce impacts and end the COVID-19 pandemic. Here we assess 747 pandemic-related research articles that empirically investigated those claims.

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There is an urgent need to improve maternal and neonatal health outcomes and decrease their racial disparities in the US. Prenatal nurse home visiting programs could help achieve this by increasing the use and quality of prenatal care and facilitating healthy behaviors during pregnancy. We conducted a randomized controlled trial of 5,670 Medicaid-eligible pregnant people in South Carolina to evaluate how a nurse home visiting program affected prenatal health care and health outcomes.

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We analyze the impact of expanded adult Medicaid eligibility on the enrollment of already-eligible children. We analyze the 2008 Oregon Medicaid lottery, in which some low-income uninsured adults were randomly selected to be allowed to apply for Medicaid. Children in these households were eligible for Medicaid irrespective of the lottery outcome.

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Importance: Improving birth outcomes for low-income mothers is a public health priority. Intensive nurse home visiting has been proposed as an intervention to improve these outcomes.

Objective: To determine the effect of an intensive nurse home visiting program on a composite outcome of preterm birth, low birth weight, small for gestational age, or perinatal mortality.

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Neighborhood characteristics may moderate the effects of Medicaid coverage on health outcomes. Identifying this interplay can inform the design, targeting, and implementation of health policy. We combine data from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment, which randomized access to Medicaid, with rich new data on multiple domains of neighborhood characteristics to assess the interaction between the local environment and the effect of insurance on health.

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Workplace wellness programs aim to improve employee health and lower health care spending. Recent randomized studies have found modest short-run effects on health behaviors, but longer-run effects remain poorly understood. We analyzed a clustered randomized trial of a workplace wellness program implemented at a large multisite US employer.

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Background: Policy-makers are increasingly seeking rigorous evidence on the impact of programs that go beyond typical health care settings to improve outcomes for low-income families during the critical period around the transition to parenthood and through early childhood.

Methods: This study is a randomized controlled trial evaluating the impact of the Nurse-Family Partnership's expansion in South Carolina. The scientific trial was made possible by a "Pay for Success" program embedded within a 1915(b) Waiver from Medicaid secured by the South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.

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