Our Projects
Upcoming Events
On Tuesday, May 7, 2024, the McCourt School of Public Policy’s Better Government Lab will be hosting a one-day conference on Counting the Time Tax: New Ways to Measure Administrative Burden.
Our Projects
Barriers to Oral Health in Medicaid
With support from the George E. Richmond Foundation , this research project examines barriers to oral health care for families using Medicaid. Oral health has long been considered and treated separately from the rest of the body in the United States health care system. The health of your mouth, however, from your teeth and lips to your jaw and its muscles, is closely connected to overall health and wellbeing. Indeed, oral health has been linked to everything from cardiac outcomes to respiratory diseases.
To learn more about access to oral health care for children with Medicaid coverage, read our 2022 report on Burdens in Medicaid.
To learn more about administrative burdens to Medicaid oral health access across the United States, read our 2023 survey of State Practices.
More information on state efforts to reduce administrative burden in oral health care available in our breakdown of state strategies.
Can Better Digital Government Improve Access to State Safety Nets?
The Better Government Lab is partnering with Safety Net Innovation La b at Code for America —the leading civic tech nonprofit that works with community leaders and governments to build equitable, accessible digital tools and services— to examine how improvements to digital government can expand access to the social safety net at the state government level. The Better Government Lab will work to inform the design of these interventions, as well as evaluate their efficacy. Examples include using better digital outreach, and making application processes simpler and easier.
A Measurement Tool to Identify and Reduce Administrative Burdens in the Safety Net
With funding from Schmidt Futures Social Safety Net Product Studio , the Better Government Lab is develop a user survey scale to better measure, and understand, when people experience administrative burdens in their efforts to access vital safety net benefits by creating a validated scale. This administrative burden scale will help civic tech and government better evaluate whether efforts to make the safety net more accessible are working. Please contact us if you are interested in using the scale.
Improving Public Understanding of OASI
This project is funded by the SSA’s RDRC grant mechanism. Many express doubts about the financial stability of the Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) program and specifically whether they will receive Social Security benefits when they retire. Half of individuals aged 51-64 say they worry a great deal about whether they will receive their retirement benefits and more generally about the financial stability of the program. This skepticism is of concern given that these same individuals are currently paying Social Security taxes, which fund benefits for current retirees. To address this problem, this project will measure base levels of understanding regarding the financial stability of the program and test differing interventions to improve the public’s understanding of the issue and increase confidence in the Social Security Administration and the possibility of a political solution. This project uses survey experiments among a representative sample of the United States’ population, and examine the efficacy of new communication strategies by comparing them against current modes of communication by the Social Security Administration. The project will provide evidence-based recommendations to inform the Social Security Administration’s outreach and communication efforts.
PI: Pamela Herd
Co-PIs: Sebastian Jilke, Donald Moynihan
Developing Rigorous Program Evaluation Opportunities in Partnership with the Federal Government
The project is funded through a grant by Arnold Ventures. It’s goals is to build a pipeline of project proposals to rigorously evaluate federal programs and interventions that are backed by highly-promising prior evidence, or are widely implemented, with the goal of identifying exceptional social programs with demonstrated long-term social effects of recognized policy importance.
PI: Sebastian Jilke
Co-PIs: Nada Eissa, Donal Moynihan, Andrew Zeitlin
Project partners: Office of Evaluation sciences at the General Services Administration; Evidence Team at OMB
POAB
Funded by the European Research Council, the Psychology of Administrative Burden project offers insights into the psychological processes by which individuals experience burdens when dealing state actions tied to welfare benefit programs. In order to effectively mitigate administrative burden and inequalities in citizens’ experiences of these burdens, we need a deep understanding of the psychological processes by which individuals experience burdens when dealing with state actions. The project applies a wide variety of empirical techniques to examine the effects of burdens in different settings.
Increasing Vaccine Takeup through Performance Feedback
BGL director Sebastian Jilke is collaborating with a team of researchers at the Office of Evaluation Sciences and the Atlanta VA health care system to increase seasonal flu immunizations among veterans through a performance feedback intervention to health care teams.
Increasing Participation in Ticket to Work
In collaboration with the Social Security Administration and researchers at the Office of Evaluation Sciences, BGL director Sebastian Jilke is developing a large-scale RCT to increase participation in the SSA’s Ticket to Work program through developing an evidence-based approach to targeting outreach to eligible beneficiaries.