The National Advisory Committee on Rural Health and Human Services authored this document on rural health and human services in the United States. This report examines the following key topics: Medicare Advantage, Head Start, and substance abuse. Findings confirm the difficulty of implementing human services in rural areas.

This fact sheet, from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, provides an overview of the health of African American men, including mortality rates, health status, insurance coverage, and access to care. Authors find that African American adult men are more likely to lack health insurance than boys, as are adult men in the Midwest and the South, compared to the Northeast and the West.

This resource is from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office of Inspector General (OIG), and provides information on OIG’s initiatives from the last 30 years. OIG has continued to work in audit, investigative, and evaluative oversight of Medicare, Medicaid, and the group of public health agencies that comprise HHS. The Office is also confronting new issues in public health under the recent Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003, the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, emergency preparedness and response and health information technology initiatives.

In this policy brief from the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan, authors examine the relationship between education and health. The findings include evidence that better educated people have lower morbidity rates from the most common diseases in the United States. Authors conclude that education policy has the potential to improve the overall health in our country.

Utilizing the National Center for Children in Poverty’s Family Resource Simulator, this article reviews policies in Illinois that support work and self-sufficiency among families. It was found that Illinois is successful in providing adequate family resources, but rewarding progress in the workforce is still a challenge. The Simulator showed that full-time, low-wage workers in Illinois cannot afford basic family necessities—including housing, food, health care, child care, and transportation—without the help of public work supports.

Utilizing the 2005 Current Population Survey data, this Urban Institute brief examines national patterns of coverage among families with State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) eligible children. One important issue with SCHIP Reauthorization is that the SCHIP program does not reach all of those eligible for the program. It was estimated in 2002 that 3 million children were uninsured despite SCHIP eligibility.

Mathematica authored this brief, which is an evaluation of the Covering Kids and Families Initiative, funded through the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation to increase the use of the State Children's Insurance Program (SCHIP) for low-income families. Specifically, this brief offers information on best practices for expanding the span of the SCHIP program and increasing enrollment in the SCHIP and Medicaid programs.

Barbara Devaney, Laura Kalb, Ronette Briefel, Teresa Zavitsky-Novak, Nancy Clusen, Paula Ziegler, authors. Features articles related to this study that Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. conducted for Gerber. The Feeding Infants and Toddlers Study (FITS) provides a wealth of data on the food and nutrient intakes, background characteristics, growth and development milestones, and feeding patterns and transitions for a nationally representative sample of infants and toddlers.

Authored by Anne Gordon, Heather Hartline-Grafton, and Renee Nogales. Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) provides supplemental food, nutrition education, and health and social service referrals to low-income pregnant, breastfeeding, and postpartum women, as well as to infants and children younger than five. This study describes a range of innovative practices at 20 State or local WIC agencies focusing on breastfeeding promotion and support, nutrition and health education, and service delivery. For each program, the report provides background information and discusses the source of the innovation, key challenges, implementation lessons learned, evidence of success, and the feasibility of replication.

From the National Center for Children in Poverty, this article highlights effective programs, policy opportunities, and other strategies to improve educational outcomes for children. This brief is to inform policymakers and other stakeholders on strategies to promote the healthy educational development of children.