During the COVID-19 pandemic, states utilized temporary Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) flexibilities to provide emergency benefits and maintain support for households with children missing school meals.
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.
An on-demand webinar showing how counties can design, fund, and measure local wage boost pilots to strengthen the child care workforce and support economic participation.
The team conducted experiments to determine whether clients would be responsive to proactive support offered by a chatbot, and identify the ideal timing of the intervention.
Tech Talent Project has partnered with American Enterprise Institute, the Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University and New America to release a series of memos to help states make quick, meaningful progress in building technical capacity while avoiding past pitfalls.
This is the summary version of a report that documents four experiments exploring if AI can be used to expedite the translation of SNAP and Medicaid policies into software code for implementation in public benefits eligibility and enrollment systems under a Rules as Code approach.
This report explores the role that academic and corporate Research Ethics Committees play in evaluating AI and data science research for ethical issues, and also investigates the kinds of common challenges these bodies face.
Eligible people struggle to maintain their case status for critical safety net services, often due to administrative hurdles and poor communication. Code for America piloted text message reminders to support Louisianans, which helped clients avoid costly churn. Text messages are an underrated, efficient solution for human service agencies to meet client expectations and improve case outcomes.
This brief analyzes the current state of federal and state government communication around benefits eligibility rules and policy and how these documents are being tracked and adapted into code by external organizations. This work includes comparisons between coded examples of policy and potential options for standardizing code based on established and emerging data standards, tools, and frameworks.
SNAP Waivers and Adaptations During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Survey of State Agency Perspectives in 2020 is a study conducted by the Johns Hopkins Institute for Health and Social Policy (IHSP) based at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the American Public Human Services Association (APHSA). This research seeks to understand perspectives from state SNAP administrators on the successes, challenges, and lessons learned from waivers and flexibilities used to preserve equitable access to SNAP during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on state agency survey responses, this report summarizes key findings from the first calendar year of pandemic response and provides policy considerations for the future of SNAP. This research was supported by Healthy Eating Research, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Johns Hopkins Institute for Health and Social Policy
Drawing on interviews and convenings with experts and practitioners from the field of public interest technology, this report contains recommendations across five core priority action areas for cross-sector innovation and collaboration to improve state benefits systems through procurement practices.
