This report examines the phenomenon of "churn" in public benefit programs, where eligible participants temporarily lose benefits due to administrative processes, analyzing its impact on both recipients and state agencies, and suggesting strategies to reduce its occurrence.
The National Health Law Program released an updated Guide to Modified Adjusted Gross Income, including sections on ACA tax filing and reporting, clarification on commonly asked questions about Social Security Income, and updated IRS tax filing thresholds.
This guide provides practical insights for benefits administrators on redesigning benefits systems using human-centered design to ensure all eligible residents can access crucial social safety net resources.
This toolkit provides practical guidance for agencies, researchers, and community partners to embed racial equity throughout every stage of data integration and use.
Policymakers, program administrators, federal leaders, researchers, and advocates are increasingly focused on using administrative data to build evidence for improving government programs. Achieving this goal requires accessible data sources and the capacity to use them, yet stakeholders have little information about the baseline level of state capacity in these areas. How does one measure concepts such as “effective data use” and “analytic capacity?” This brief reports findings from a pioneering and comprehensive needs assessment that examined the capacity of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs in 54 U.S. states and territories to analyze data used for program improvement, monitoring, and evidence-building. The needs assessment provides a foundation for technical assistance and continued improvement for the TANF program and may also provide valuable insights and frameworks for other state-administered human services programs.
The CARES Act Stimulus Payments Report by New America analyzes the implementation and impact of the Economic Impact Payments (stimulus checks) distributed during the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting accessibility challenges and policy recommendations for future direct payments.
A modernized public benefits system would better serve program participants, administrators, policy makers, and taxpayers. This paper proposes a set of principles both define the desired future state and outline the values that shape decision making along the way. Practices describe the processes needed to achieve modernization.
As a part of Benefit Data Trust (BDT)’s Medicaid Churn Learning Collaborative, BDT has created a memo describing policy options and state examples for Medicaid administrators to reduce churn for non-MAGI Medicaid enrollees when the federal public health emergency ends.
The report highlights that many eligible low-income children are not receiving WIC benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic, with participation rates varying significantly by state and lagging behind programs like Medicaid and SNAP.
This brief highlights key takeaways from APHSA’s work on young families, starting with an overview of the young families work and its early years, followed by key takeaways and highlights from its final year, ending with opportunities for future work in the young families space.
American Public Human Services Association (APHSA)
The toolkit provides strategies for state and local WIC agencies to enhance enrollment by utilizing data from Medicaid and SNAP for cross-program data matching and targeted outreach.
A New America report examines the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program, highlighting its role in aiding low-income tax filers and offering recommendations to enhance public benefit access through improved tax filing assistance.
