Capacity Building
Updated Advocacy Toolbox: How to make a difference, where to start, and how to get there
Just in time for the legislative session starting today, we’ve updated our CT Health Policy Advocacy Toolbox to help with your advocacy to make healthcare better in Connecticut. (Actually, we update it every month.) Healthcare policymaking in CT can be complex and frustrating. But you’re not alone and there is help. The comprehensive site covers…
Read MoreBook Club — The Data Detective
The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics follows on the Book Club’s obsession with statistics and good data analysis (here, here, here, and here). Good policy rests on good evidence. There are good sources, including the books linked above, that uncover misleading information, with clues to identify them, and that’s important.…
Read MoreAnalysis: New study finds 1 in 5 households has medical debt that averages $21,687
Having health insurance is no longer the protection it used to be. A pair of new studies shine a bright light on inadequate insurance and its consequences – medical debt. Read more
Read MoreBook Club: Making Numbers Count
If your job is to communicate policy and make sense of it, you need Making Numbers Count – The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers by Chip Health and Karla Starr. Numbers are the bedrock of policy (or they should be) but they are scary to 99.9% of people – including the people you need…
Read MoreCT NJ Op-Ed: We need better, smarter solutions
There’s a lot of news about the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion and the latest mass shootings. Efforts to preserve women’s choices and bring sanity to our gun laws are critically important. But we don’t spend as much time finding upstream solutions to prevent problems, so we won’t need a fix. This blindness is very…
Read MoreYale BIPOC disability group seeking members with lived experience
The Disability Lived Experience Action Network, D-LEAN, is seeking people who identify as BIPOC with disabilities – mental, intellectual, or developmental. D-LEAN is sponsored by the Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health and funded by the Connecticut Council on Developmental Disabilities. D-LEAN is looking for leaders or emerging leaders. Members will learn about the…
Read MoreBook Club — Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgement
Noise – A Flaw in Human Judgement by Daniel Kahneman, Oliver Sibony, and Cass Sunstein, is long, so it sat on my bookshelf for awhile. But it’s worth the time. Noise is the variation in judgements that shouldn’t vary. Judges should give similar sentences in similar cases, underwriters should find the same expected risks from…
Read MoreCT hospitals losing ground on social responsibility
Eight Connecticut hospitals received A grades this year for social responsibility from the Lown Institute, down from twelve last year. No Connecticut hospitals were in Lown’s or US News’ top 20 hospitals in the US. Griffin Hospital ranked #157 in Lown’s composite ranking this year among 3606 US hospitals, the best in Connecticut. Last year…
Read MoreCT ranks 3rd in health system performance, but there’s lots of work to do
Connecticut’s health system performance is the third best in the nation, according to the latest Commonwealth Fund State Scorecard. COVID strongly influenced state’s performance; Connecticut ranked tenth among states on seven measures including COVID mortality, health system stress, and vaccination rates. There is a lot of room for improvement in Connecticut’s health system. Sadly, Connecticut…
Read MoreBook Club: Think Again
You have to read Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know by Adam Grant. We all think our minds are open, but we’re wrong. Intelligence is nice, but the critical skills are rethinking, relearning, and the courage to dump baggage. The Dunning-Kruger effect is real – the people with the most confidence…
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