Rand Health Quarterly

In response to the widespread youth mental health crisis, some kindergarten-through-12th-grade (K-12) schools have begun employing artificial intelligence (AI)-based tools to help identify students at risk for suicide and self-harm. The adoption of AI and other types of educational technology to partially address student mental health needs has been a natural forward step for many schools during the transition to remote education. However, there is limited understanding about how such programs work, how they are implemented by schools, and how they may benefit or harm students and their families...

The U.S. Air Force asked RAND Project AIR FORCE (PAF) to help assess the well-being of its wounded members and the quality of services provided to facilitate their recovery and reintegration. RAND PAF fielded a survey in the fall of 2016 to assess wounded airmen's functioning in the domains of physical health, mental health, interpersonal relationships, unemployment, and financial status, as well as their utilization and perceptions of Air Force nonmedical programs for wounded airmen. The authors of this study invited all 713 wounded airmen enrolled in the Air Force Wounded Warrior program to complete the survey, and 270 airmen (38 percent) completed it...

Like the United States as a whole, Virginia faces a significant shortage of health care workers in nursing, primary care, and behavioral health. If current trends persist, these shortages will increase across Virginia. The authors of this study identify interventions that can help the Virginia Health Workforce Development Authority (VHWDA) address these health care workforce shortages. To accomplish this goal, they applied an analytic framework to existing or potential interventions for retaining, recruiting, and improving the structural efficiency of the nursing, primary care, and behavioral health workforces in Virginia...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

RAND Europe was commissioned by the Novo Nordisk Foundation to conduct a study on pathogen surveillance and current initiatives. The study aims to provide an overview of the pathogen surveillance space internationally and the stakeholders involved, as well as to understand the strengths and weaknesses of different initiatives, the challenges of pathogen surveillance and how they have been addressed, and how data has been used to inform public health decision making. To do this, a scoping review of pathogen surveillance initiatives was conducted, and ten case studies were developed and selected for further review following a workshop attended by the Novo Nordisk Foundation and RAND Europe study team...

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and biotechnology, whilst in its infancy, presents significant opportunities and risks, and proactive policy is needed to manage these emerging technologies. Whilst AI continues to have significant and broad impact, its relevance and complexity magnify when integrated with other emerging technologies. The confluence of Machine Learning (ML), a subset of AI, with gene editing (GE) in particular can foster substantial benefits as well as daunting risks that range from ethics to national security...

Over the past two decades, pandemic preparedness has proven to be critical to health, national, and economic security. Now, countries are investing billions of dollars in various pandemic preparedness tools, such as vaccines and broad-spectrum medical countermeasures (MCM), to address the threats arising from outbreaks. These tools not only offer protection against naturally occurring and accidental biological incidents but can also help provide some protection against deliberate biological attacks. Furthermore, pandemic preparedness has substantial economic implications for both the public and private sectors because of its connection with the biotechnology industry, an important component of the worldwide economy...

The U.S. Army has a long history of preventing, detecting, and treating infectious diseases. Like other organizations and agencies involved in public health, the Army is increasingly interested in syndromic surveillance strategies-those designed to identify outbreaks before clinical data are available. Researchers use various methods to identify surveillance strategies across the globe, investigate these strategies' benefits and limitations, and recommend actions to aid the Army in their efforts to detect emerging epidemics and pandemics...

Leading up to the 2020 general election, state election boards grew concerned that the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic might drive voters away from the polls or that crowded polling stations would spread the virus and lead to a wave of new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. In an effort to safely conduct the 2020 general election, many states changed their voting laws by implementing automatic voter registration, removing excuse requirements for absentee ballots, and expanding early voting windows...

Retired service members with a service-connected disability cannot always receive their full retirement pay and disability benefits because of rules against "double-dipping" from federal funding sources. Veterans' advocates have long argued that the current law is unfair and that it denies disabled veterans the full compensation that they have earned from their military service. New legislation would drop the offset that reduces retirement pay for some disabled veterans. If the Major Richard Star Act is signed into law, what would change for disabled veterans, and how many would actually see an increase in their compensation?...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Delivery of high-quality behavioral health (BH) care is essential to supporting the readiness of the U.S. armed forces and their families. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic led to a dramatic expansion of virtual behavioral health (VBH) care: remote patient access to BH care using technology such as a computer or cellular phone. The U.S. Army asked RAND Arroyo Center to examine the use of VBH to inform recommendations on the role of VBH care in the future of BH care in the Military Health System...

Global health engagement (GHE) is an integral part of the cooperation efforts of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the geographic combatant commands (GCCs) with partner nations and provides support in training and preparing their military and civilian health systems. These activities encompass a wide spectrum of engagements-military-to-military, military-to-civilian, and multilateral-and support joint missions of humanitarian aid and disaster response, deterrence, access and presence, counterterrorism, and homeland defense...

California leads the nation with its relatively low rate of maternal deaths during pregnancy and the postpartum period. However, individuals insured via Medi-Cal suffer a disproportionate share of maternal deaths and severe complications at birth; within this group of publicly insured individuals, certain racial and/or ethnic groups have even higher rates of poor outcomes. The state can attribute part of its success in lowering rates of maternal mortality (MM) to the implementation of a data-driven statewide portfolio of quality improvement activities focused on the leading causes of maternal death...

Acute and chronic pain are common among service members, with musculoskeletal pain and injuries being the leading cause of nondeployability among active-duty service members. Given the significant implications for individual health and force readiness, providing high-quality pain care to service members is a priority of the Military Health System (MHS). Prior RAND research used administrative data to assess the quality and safety of pain care and opioid prescribing in the MHS, generated a set of quality measures that the MHS could adopt going forward, and identified strengths and opportunities for improvement in care provided to service members with pain conditions...

The topic of the tenth U.S. Department of Defense International State-of-the-Science Meeting on Blast Injury Research was "Toward a Unified Multiscale Computational Model of the Human Body's Immediate Responses to Blast-Related Trauma." The meeting was held August 16-17, 2022, at the RAND Corporation office in Arlington, Virginia, and more than 60 scientists, clinicians, and military leaders provided scientific overviews, presentations, and posters describing new and emerging science in the field. Before the meeting, a conference planning committee consulted on the literature review and research questions and served as a peer review panel for submitted abstracts...

More than 155,000 New Yorkers were trained in Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) between 2016 and 2020. Free citywide trainings were made available to all New Yorkers and were disseminated through city agencies and community-based settings. RAND Corporation researchers conducted a mixed-methods study that included a web-based survey of past trainees and a series of focus groups with leaders of community-based organizations and city agency staff to assess the impact of the MHFA trainings and needs for future training...

National security organizations need highly skilled and intellectually creative individuals who are eager to apply their talents to address the nation's most pressing challenges. In public and private discussions, officials and experts addressed the need for neurodiversity in the national security community. They described missions that are too important and too difficult to be left to those who use their brains only in typical ways. Neurodivergent is an umbrella term that covers a variety of cognitive diagnoses, including (but not exclusive to) autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit disorder (ADD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dyslexia, dyscalculia, and Tourette's syndrome...

The United States faces an unprecedented mental health crisis, with youth and young adults at the center. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly 50 percent of college students reported at least one mental health concern. The COVID-19 pandemic notably exacerbated these issues and underscored the urgent need to identify and implement ways to ameliorate the youth mental health crisis. In 2021, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine called on the field of higher education to address growing concerns about student mental health by identifying and elevating emerging and promising approaches that offer a more holistic way to support students' mental health...

Section 702 of the fiscal year 2019 National Defense Authorization Act directed the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to conduct a pilot study to assess the feasibility and advisability of using intensive outpatient treatment programs to address posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and associated mental health problems among service members who have experienced sexual harassment or sexual assault while in the military. RAND researchers conducted a programmatic review of four intensive outpatient programs (IOPs)-two in the private sector and two in DoD-to understand different program components available to active-duty service members who have suffered sexual trauma and other trauma...