This report examines how state governments organize and manage human services programs, analyzing various agency structures and their impact on service delivery and coordination with the health care sector.
Benefits Data Trust (BDT), in collaboration with the Center for Health Care Strategies (CHCS), conducted a nationwide analysis of how states coordinate across Medicaid and SNAP programs to streamline access to benefits. Between June and August of 2022, BDT and CHCS collected 114 survey responses from Medicaid and SNAP programs in 46 states and the District of Columbia.
The Technology Transformation Service at GSA recently created a new Public Benefits Studio to focus on fostering a more cohesive, coordinated experience for the public, across programs.
This study examines how bureaucratic interactions differ among public assistance programs—WIC, SNAP, and Medicaid—highlighting variations in participant experiences and the psychological costs associated with each.
The NYC Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity (NYC Opportunity) developed the NYC Benefits Platform, including ACCESS NYC, to help residents easily discover and check eligibility for over 80 social programs.
This playbook is designed to help government and other key sectors use data sharing to illuminate who is not accessing benefits, connect under-enrolled populations to vital assistance, and make the benefits system more efficient for agencies and participants alike.
On January 20, 2021, the President issued EO 13985, which established that the Federal Government should pursue a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all. USDA's Equity Action Plain details a subset of USDA actions to achieve this goal.
Alluma is a nonprofit that provides digital solutions to simplify eligibility screening and enrollment for social benefit programs, supporting cross-benefit access in 45 counties and two states. Their One-x-Connection product suite streamlines Medicaid and SNAP applications using a business rules engine, with a focus on human-centered design and anonymous, simplified eligibility checks, having helped screen over 10 million individuals and submitted over 67 million applications.
The Texting Playbook provides guidance and well-researched strategies to help state agencies implement texting in support of Medicaid, SNAP, WIC, and other benefits programs. It provides an overview of how to start texting clients; the types of messages to send, including real examples; Federal Communications Commision (FCC) policy guidance; how to encourage opt-ins and collect consent; how to avoid coming across as spam; and a cost analysis of texting.
PolicyEngine is a nonprofit that provides a free, open-source web app enabling users in the US and UK to estimate taxes and benefits at the household level, while also simulating the effects of policy changes. By combining tax and benefits data, PolicyEngine helps individuals and policymakers better understand the impacts of existing policies and proposed reforms, using microsimulation models built from legislation and enhanced survey data.
Github repository for Policy Rules Database, which encodes up-to-date rules and provisions for all major federal and state public assistance programs, taxes, and tax credits.
