Good morning! ☀️

Last year, The Commonwealth Fund, a private U.S. foundation, issued a report which compared the healthcare system in the United States with 11 other high-income nations. The top performing countries were Norway, the Netherlands, and Australia. The United States ranked last overall, despite spending far more than any other nation.

What did the highest performing nations have in common? They provided universal coverage, invested in primary care across different communities, reduced administrative burdens, and invested heavily in social services.

Question: What percentage of its gross domestic product (GDP) did the United States spend on healthcare in 2019?

News

Has child poverty decreased?

Earlier this week, news outlets across the board heralded an incredible new finding: Between 1993 and 2019, child poverty across the United States had decreased by 59%! The trend, as the original report claimed, was “unequaled in the history of poverty measurement in the United States.”

This is highlighted by the graph below:

What led to this dramatic decline? According to the authors of the original report, child poverty decreased due to:

• Lower unemployment rates, increases in single mothers’ labor force participation, and increases in state minimum wages, which explained about 33 percent of the overall decline in child poverty from 1993 to 2019

• Demographic shifts, which led to “less child deep poverty”

• The social safety net, which helped cut poverty by 9 percent in 1993 and by 44 percent in 2019—tripling the number of children protected from poverty over this time.

Unfortunately, when things seem too good to be true, they usually are. The People’s Policy Project, a left-leaning American think tank, looked into the data and showed that child poverty may not have decreased at all.

Instead, there were differences in the census which were “throwing off” the readings. They end their article with the statement: “If you remove this obviously bullshit statistical blip from the report, there is basically no child poverty decline at all after the year 2000”. 😔

Other social work-related news

• A rape victim whose DNA from her sexual assault case was used by San Francisco police to arrest her in an unrelated property crime on Monday filed a lawsuit against the city

• High rents are outpacing federal disability payments and leaving many people homeless

• Social worker Nicole Alston lost her baby girl in 2005. It led her to a career focused on supporting other bereaved mothers and families.

• A new $900,000 grant from the psychedelics-focused Heffter Research Institute will allow researchers from Johns Hopkins, Yale University, and New York University to build out a postdoctoral fellowship and gold-standard training program in psychedelic therapy.

Reads on research

• Each year, the Gates Foundation releases a report about the world’s progress toward the Global Goals—a set of ambitious objectives for 2030 that were adopted by the United Nations. This week, they published the 2022 edition, which highlights the progress that has been made so far.

• Prenatal cannabis exposure following the middle of the first trimester—generally after five to six weeks of fetal development—is associated with attention, social, and behavioral problems that persist as the affected children progress into early adolescence (11 and 12 years of age),

• The researchers analyzed imaging and behavioral data on more than 11,000 children, 199 of whom had mild TBI and 527 of whom had a possible mild TBI. The analysis revealed that these children were at a 15% increased risk of an emotional or behavioral problem if they had experienced a mild TBI, and 7% increased risk if they had a significant blow to the head that resulted in a possible mild TBI.

Other reads on policy

• With more than 100,000 people living on California’s streets, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a first-of-its kind law on Wednesday that will allow courts to order people with severe mental health difficulties to obtain treatment for up to one year, which could be extended for a second year. The plan could include medication, housing and therapy.

Tech, social work, and cool opportunities 😎

• The virtual ADHD medication management company Done Global Inc., branded as Done., is reportedly under investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Diversion Control Division

• Hopscotch, a digital youth mental health startup, secured $8 million in seed funding.

• Staff navigator at Kandu Health

• Clinical Programs Specialist at Memora Health

• Mindbloom, a leader in the psychedelic space, is looking for a part-time content writer. Email steve@mindbloom.com for more information.

Answer: 16.8%. The chart below compares the U.S. spending to the 11 other high-income countries