New research published in the journal Medical Care by Associate Professor Jie Chen (Health Services Administration) looks at the roles of local health departments in promoting mental health in reducing 30-day re-admission rates in Maryland. Thirty-day re-admission rates are  a statistic considered as a quality measure under Medicare’s Readmissions Reduction Program. When hospitals exceed their targeted re-admission rate, they receive a financial penalty from Medicare.

More than half of preventable hospitalizations in Maryland are for people with co-existing mental health and chronic physical conditions. A new study by School of Public Health researchers suggests that low-cost mental health programs provided by local health departments can play a critical role in preventing these costly and unnecessary hospitalizations.

Dr. Jie Chen, an associate professor in the School of Public Health’s Department of Health Services Administration, has received a $2.25 million National Institutes of Health RO1 grant to examine system-level care coordination and estimate how it impacts African American and Latino patients with mental illness.

The project, called "Effects of Hospital-Community-Public Health Integration on Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Mental Health," will run between July 2017 and February 2022. 

As the nation grapples with the ongoing opioid crisis, the public health community had been working to expand access to much-needed treatment. But when opioid abuse coincides with mental illness -- as it often does -- less is known about the effect the dual diagnosis has on outcomes and what specialized treatment it might require.

State policies that rely only on treatment programs or on criminal penalties to help get pregnant women who use drugs into rehabilitation aren't as effective as those that use multiple approaches, according to new research from the School of Public Health.