Beyond the Beltway: The Fight for Affordable Drugs

By Michael Friedrich, ArnoldVentures.org contributor
 

April is Second Chance Month. Leading reform organizations, many supported by Arnold Ventures, are helping to advance policies that extend employment and other opportunities to justice-impacted people.

 

What’s Happening: In 2017, the Prison Fellowship designated April as Second Chance Month in an effort to raise awareness of the challenges that justice-impacted people face and create momentum for policy changes that smooth their process of reintegration. With support from Arnold Ventures, the Prison Fellowship and many other organizations are assisting state efforts to expand second chances through a range of laws that automatically clear criminal records, reduce limitations on professional licensing, and review long sentences.

 

Why It Matters: Around 1 in 3 people in the U.S. currently has a criminal record, and those records disproportionately affect Black Americans. Criminal records can follow people long after they are arrested, convicted, or released from prison and often become barriers to accessing employment, housing, financial services, and other basic needs. Second chance legislation aims to expand opportunity for people with criminal records, improve public safety, and increase racial justice. 

 

What’s Next: Advocacy groups across the country are supporting new legislation that creates second chances for justice-impacted people, and bipartisan momentum on this work continues to grow. 

Read the story >

By Torie Ludwin, communications manager

Not every contractor on a college campus is the same when it comes to the federal government. Meal plans, yard services, bookstores, and cleaning crews, for example, are not involved with the core responsibilities of an educational institution. However, some contractors, like online program management companies (OPMs), are involved with learning, teaching, curriculum, or paying for school with financial aid. In that case, the U.S. Department of Education wants to make sure these contractors, which are called third-party servicers, are in compliance with rules regarding federal financial aid.

 

What's Happening: The U.S. Department of Education has asked for comments on the requirements for third-party servicers. Right now, they must submit an annual audit to the Department, as their work connects with an institution's ability to qualify for, use, and manage federal financial aid.

 

Why it Matters: The span and scope of third-party servicers has grown over time. We urge the Department of Education to maintain strong accountability requirements for third-party servicers, and we have also provided suggestions for how to tailor the requirements with respect to basic needs services and student success programs.

 

What's Next: Online program management companies (OPMs) are already reacting to the third-party servicer guidance. One of them, 2U, is suing the U.S. Department of Education, saying the Department radically redefined what a servicer is and has no authority to do so.

 

Read Arnold Ventures' comments on third-party servicer guidelines

Read the story >

Related: Online Program Management Companies: A For-Profit Pocket within Higher Ed

By Juliana Keeping. communications manager

100
Number of days into 2023's historic rollout of drug pricing reforms
 

Monday marked the 100th day of 2023. AV took a moment to reflect on the progress of a landmark drug pricing provisions passed late last year that enjoy strong bipartisan support from voters and will lower the cost of prescriptions for millions of Americans. The rollout is underway, but these reforms will be implemented over a long timeline.

 

Read more on AV.org about how far we’ve come, and what’s next in the drug pricing space.

 

Related: AV’s Drug Pricing Fact Sheet 

Justin Milner, Arnold Ventures' new executive vice president of evidence-based policy, who discusses the progress made over the past 15 years in building evidence around social policy, and the ambition of evidence-based policy becoming its own political constituency.

 

"We’re trying to find a seat at the table for research and evidence, but fully understand that it is not going to be at the head of the table," Milner says.

Read the Q&A >

Criminal Justice

• DCist profiles Peace for DC, a new nonprofit community violence intervention organization in Washington, D.C., and mentions an AV-supported project by Johns Hopkins professor Daniel Webster and University of Maryland professor Joseph Richardson that will study violence intervention programs in the city.
   
• The Sixth Amendment Center (6AC), an AV grantee, analyzes the state of assigned attorney compensation in New York.
   
• The Hill covers a letter sent by members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) that urges Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and the Department of Transportation (DOT) to denounce and address inequitable and harmful traffic enforcement practices.
   
• Dr. Rod Brunson, senior advisor to the AV-supported Center for the Study and Practice of Violence Reduction and Professor at the University of Maryland, talks about new approaches to gun crime with Maryland Today.
   

• Michigan's new Clean Slate Law will help more than 1 million residents by automatically expunging certain criminal records, WXYZ Detroit reports.

Health Care

• In good news for people dually enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid, the Biden administration will direct additional oversight around Medicare Advantage plans that target people eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid. Plans that market to dually eligible people — without actually offering the benefit of integrated care — should not be tolerated.
  
  Related: Read AV’s earlier recommendation to the administration. 
   
• Private equity deals in health care are still surging, despite scrutiny from the White House around declining standards of care in nursing homes related to these deals, Healthcare Dive reports. 
  
  Related: What does the big picture expansion into health care mean for patients? Let Kaiser Health News explain. 
  
  Related: "Researcher Puts Nursing Home Ownership Under the Microscope."
   
• Nonprofit hospitals in the U.S. spent less on their communities than they received in tax breaks, writes MedPage Today. Read the report cited from the Lown Institute here. Over half of US hospitals are nonprofits and therefore subject to a series of “community benefit” requirements, including limitations on aggressive billing practices in exchange for these lucrative tax exemptions.
   

Public Finance

• Joe Bishop-Henchman writes about the root causes of IRS dysfunction and the institutional roadblocks to transforming the agency for the CATO Institute.
   

• J. Baxter Oliphant highlights new survey data from Pew that shows Americans' top frustration with the tax system isn't the amount they pay — but that the wealthy aren’t paying their share.
   

• C. Eugene Steuerle and Nikhita Airi write about the long-term fiscal implication of Biden’s budget for AV grantee the Tax Policy Center.
   

Higher Education

• IHEP and HCM Strategists releases a three-part series of insights to help colleges and state leaders boost transfer student enrollment, retention, and completion. The work is based on TransferBOOST (Bachelor’s Opportunity Options that are Straightforward and Transparent), an IHEP-led initiative to create equitable and affordable pathways for transfer students.
   
• In Politico, Michael Stratford reports on three for-profit schools who have petitioned the Supreme Court to block the Sweet vs. Cardona settlement. This block would stop the U.S. Department of Education from processing $6 billion in student loan discharges for students who were defrauded by their schools under the Sweet settlement. Additionally, 20 state attorneys general filed an amicus brief in support of the petition.
   

Evidence-Based Policy

• AV grantee MDRC released a brief this week, “From Degrees to Dollars,” on a demonstration of CUNY’s Accelerated Study Associate Programs (ASAP) program in Ohio community colleges, which found that the student success program boosted earnings as well as graduation rates. 

• As part of Second Chance Month, AV-grantee For The People has released a new video profiling Thanh Tran, one of more than 600 people who have been given a second chance through Prosecutor-Initiated Resentencing.

• On "The Weeds" podcast, host Jonquilyn Hill speaks with AV grantee Andrew Morral of RAND's Gun Policy in America initiative about what we know about the effectiveness of assault weapon bans.
   
• AV grantee The Center for Justice Innovation's "New Thinking" podcast examines the legacy of the Supreme Court's Gideon decision and the status and future of public defense.

• On Thursday, April 20, AV's Executive Vice President of Criminal Justice Jeremy Travis will participate in a panel discussion at the New York City Bar Association on the ongoing crisis at Rikers Island and the path towards closure.
   
• On Wednesday, April 19, the new documentary, “HEART: Serving Our Neighbors in Crisis,” will premiere at The Carolina Theater in Durham, North Carolina. The documentary details the development and implementation of the new Durham Community Safety Department (DCSD), a community-centered alternative crisis response program. Register here.

This week's final inspiration, dear readers, is you. 

I will be moving on from Arnold Ventures to a new opportunity and no longer conversing with you every week, but before I do, I wanted to say how much I have appreciated your audience over the past few years.

I introduced The Abstract exactly three years ago this week in 2020 amid uncertain times. COVID-19 had just become a part of our global lexicon, and we were all trying to find our footing amid lockdowns, work from home, and school closures. The missions of organizations like Arnold Ventures and its grantees were suddenly viewed through a new lens — the pandemic made every issue more critical than ever. 

Those of you who have read this newsletter since its inception know a lot more about me than you'd  probably like. You let me talk about my children and ruminate on the hard stuff, and you accepted my off-topic and esoteric musings, from Fiona Apple to Dr. Seuss to weird, time-wasting websites. (My attempt at levity.) Most importantly, you mourned with me through some of the darkest moments in our collective history: the murder of George Floyd, the attack on our nation's Capitol, the slaying of children and schoolteachers in Uvalde, Texas. 

You screamed inside your heart with me.

We have sometimes lost subscribers because of what was written here, but they were quickly replaced with new readers, and our audience has grown by thousands since that first missive. I have been humbled by how you have let me and the AV team into your inboxes and sent notes of appreciation. You click on this final inspiration section only second-most to the top of the newsletter, which lets me know you are reading (or quickly skimming!) all the way through.

I know that when you continue to click open, you will find timely and relevant reactions to the news of the day and evidence-based updates on the issues you care about. The newsletter looks a bit different than it did three years ago — it has grown to include more voices, from our communications team to our wider AV experts. And it is better for that.

So I want to say thank you for subscribing and reading. You have made putting this newsletter together every week a joyful, worthy endeavor. And you are in good hands.

Please forward to a friend if you feel inclined, and as always, have an evidence-based week.

Best,
Stephanie DiCapua Getman

The Higher Education and Evidence-Based Policy teams have created a request for proposals for rigorous impact evaluations of programs and practices (“interventions”) to promote college success in the United States.

The Criminal Justice and Evidence-Based Policy teams at Arnold Ventures are teaming up to learn more about what works in criminal justice reform in an ongoing request for proposals for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that will test programs and practices. There is no deadline for submissions.

The Evidence-Based Policy team invites grant applications to conduct randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of social programs in any area of U.S. policy. Details are here.

View our RFPs here.