U Launches State Health Reform Evaluation Program

(April 30, 2007) -- The University of Minnesota School of Public Health today announced the opening of a new Robert Wood Johnson Foundation National Program Office to support the evaluation of state health reform efforts nationwide.

Developed in response to increased state activity to improve health care access, the State Health Access Reform Evaluation project (SHARE) will develop a coordinated approach for the evaluation of state health care reform initiatives being implemented nationwide. SHARE will coordinate state evaluation efforts, identify and fill gaps in research, and synthesize and disseminate findings to assist policy-makers interested in health reform.

The project will provide evidence-based research to state and national policy-makers on factors that contribute to successful efforts to improve access to affordable health care.

"States are our laboratories for experimenting with different health reform strategies," explained Lynn A. Blewett, Ph.D., M.A., director of SHARE and associate professor of health policy and management at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. "SHARE will be able to assess the effectiveness of state initiatives and inform the policy debate about universal coverage and ways to get there."

SHARE will be awarding $7 million in grant funding to researchers interested in evaluating state reform over a period of four years. The project is a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation with direction by the State Health Access Data Assistance Center (SHADAC) at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.

For more information about the SHARE, please visit www.statereformevaluation.org. or e-mail elukanen@umn.edu.

Contact

Sara E. Buss, Academic Health Center, 612.624.2449
Diana Harvey, School of Public Health, 612.625.7134