The National Governors Association released this brief to help governors and state policymakers incorporate data and evaluation into policy development, implementation, and monitoring, using the example of prescription opioid misuse. There are five steps to using data and evaluation in policy: creating a logic model, identifying data sources, collecting the data, analyzing the data, and making data analysis an ongoing part of the policy process. The authors break down each of the five steps in detail and provide examples from the perspective of a state attempting to reduce prescription opioid misuse.

The U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness released criteria and benchmarks for achieving the goal of ending family homelessness. The criteria apply to an entire community and are designed to address families with children under the age of 18 who are experiencing homelessness. Those criteria include identifying all families experiencing homelessness, using prevention and diversion strategies whenever possible, using coordinated entry processes, helping families swiftly move into permanent housing, and having plans in place to continue to prevent and end family homelessness. The benchmarks provide indicators that communities can use to measure their progress in ending family homelessness.

For people with opioid use disorder, a buprenorphine prescription can improve outcomes related to staying in drug treatment, involvement in the justice system, and mortality. This Urban Institute Report analyzes how the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act affected access to buprenorphine among low-income individuals. For the 32 states that expanded Medicaid, the number of buprenorphine prescriptions per enrollee increased 70%. However, this increase may still not meet the demand for buprenorphine due to persistent capacity shortages. The report also includes state-by-state data on total Medicaid spending on buprenorphine.

This interactive map from Feeding America describes the extent of food security by county across the United States. Using 2015 food insecurity data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, this map illustrates how food insecurity rates differ across regions. The map includes the food insecurity rate, the estimated percentage of the population that is eligible for SNAP and other nutrition programs, the average cost per meal, and the additional money to meet that county’s food needs.

This handbook from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration provides tools for individuals suffering from opioid use disorder to use in their recovery. A key feature of this handbook is medication’s role in opioid abuse recovery; there are sections on whether medication supports recovery, which medications can work for recovery, and how those medications function. Each section contains interactive tools that individuals can use as they progress through recovery.

Nearly 12% of American children will spend at least half of their lives from birth to age 17 living in poverty. This report from the Urban Institute analyzes factors that have helped these persistently poor children achieve economic success. Some of those factors include spending more years in an employed family, spending fewer years in a family headed by someone with a disability, and living in less segregated and disadvantaged neighborhoods. The researchers recommend several strategies to help more persistently poor children achieve economic success, such as subsidized employment for parents and programs to help families move out of disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Rapid re-housing is a strategy to combat family homelessness; ideally it entails using housing identification services to provide families with permanent housing and a short-term rental subsidy while also offering supportive services, possibly including employment assistance. In this report, Heartland Alliance analyzes the implementation of these programs, using interviews with rapid re-housing providers to make suggestions that could strengthen the implementation of these initiatives. A focus of the recommendations is on ensuring that connections to stable employment or training are facilitated as part of the rapid re-housing process.

In this report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, data on young children who have stayed in emergency homeless shelters is examined to measure child well-being 20 months after a stay in a shelter. The report considers pre-reading skills, pre-math skills, developmental delays, and behavior challenges to see if homelessness has an impact on these indicators of child well-being, using national norms for young children as a comparison. Also considered are links between a lack of housing or child care stability and well-being.