Response to COVID-19

Unmet Social Needs During the Covid-19 Pandemic

This study examines self-reported needs among Medicaid, Medicare and ACA Marketplace patients during the Covid-19 pandemic – such as access to medications and medical supplies, financial assistance, employment assistance, food insecurity and more – and how these unmet needs are associated with sociodemographic characteristics. The purpose of this analysis is to understand the level and areas of need amongst insured people during the Covid-19 pandemic, and which subpopulations are at the highest risk for unmet need.

Findings from this intervention will enable Centene Corporation and other entities to enact actionable points of intervention to better respond to unmet social needs.

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Provider Vaccine Reluctance and Refusal

Healthcare providers have a strong role in encouraging health behaviors and impacting negative perceptions of vaccines, which may contribute to vaccine uptake among patients. There has been a considerable amount of research dedicated to understanding and addressing barriers to vaccinations of patients, but less is understood about provider-level factors.

This study will examine perceptual barriers that providers hold about vaccines and explore interventions that improve provider perceptions using an artificial-intelligence platform developed by Decision Scanner Inc. This research will test the influence of several behavioral economics-based interventions on provider decision making. Based on the results of the experiment, we will propose a strategy to affect the decision of medical providers’ uptake of vaccines. This strategy will be based on the interventions that worked in the experiment and on displaying information that convinced more individuals to take the vaccine.

Findings from this study can help healthcare systems develop behavioral-economics-based interventions to improve provider vaccine uptake.