Coronavirus (COVID-19)

To help inform ongoing global discussions about the creation of a new financing mechanism for pandemic preparedness and response, including questions about its governance and operations and the extent to which civil society will be formally included, we analyzed 14 major multilateral global health and related institutions to assess how civil society has been engaged in their governance, implementation/programming, and monitoring.

With the FDA authorization of both Moderna and Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for children between the ages of 6 months and 5, the last major phase of the U.S. vaccination roll-out is underway. This brief provides an overview of the characteristics of children under the age of 5 and discusses some issues to consider in rolling out vaccination to this age group.

Community health centers have seen a rise in patients seeking non-medical services such as housing, food, nutrition, and transportation during the pandemic and have added new mental health and substance use disorder (SUD) services in response to growing need, according to a new KFF survey. Over half of the health…

Community health centers, a national network of safety-net primary care providers, are poised to be on the front lines of the unwinding of the Medicaid continuous enrollment requirement when the public health emergency (PHE) ends. Health centers can be effective in raising awareness about Medicaid renewal requirements and in providing the help needed for enrollees to maintain Medicaid or transition to other coverage.

Community health centers are a national network of safety-net primary care providers serving low-income, medically underserved communities. Based on findings from a national survey of health centers, this brief examines how the pandemic has affected health center patients and services as well as the ongoing challenges health centers and their patients face.

Total spending among traditional Medicare beneficiaries fell in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, corresponding to lower service use across most types of Medicare-covered health care services compared to 2019. The lower spending in traditional Medicare contributed to the relatively slower growth in Medicare spending overall in 2020.

Medicare spending for skilled nursing facilities increased in 2020 despite an overall decrease in the number of Medicare beneficiaries using SNF services. The higher spending is explained by longer and more expensive SNF stays in 2020 compared to 2019, both of which increased more sharply for Medicare beneficiaries under the age of 65 than for older Medicare SNF users.

Misinformation and confusion about the COVID-19 vaccines and pregnancy is common among women who are pregnant or planning to become pregnant, with about three in ten saying they believe at least one false statement regarding the COVID-19 vaccines.

Misinformation and confusion about the COVID-19 vaccines and pregnancy remains widespread, with most people – including women who are pregnant or trying to get pregnant – either believing or being uncertain about at least one of three false claims they’ve heard, a new KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor shows. Among women…

In this column for the JAMA Health Forum, Larry Levitt highlights four changes implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic that helped to make health care more accessible and affordable and the prospects for those changes to telehealth, COVID-19 coverage, Medicaid and marketplace premiums continuing beyond the pandemic’s end.