APTR Announces New Fellowship Opportunity

APTR is pleased to announce this new fellowship opportunity as part of the APTR-CDC Preventive Medicine and Public Health Fellowship Program

Deadline: February 21, 2014

Fellowship Title:

Examining Characteristics of Health and Disease in Child Medicaid Populations

Sponsoring CDC Center:

National Center for Health Statistics; Office of Analysis and Epidemiology; Infant, Child, Women’s Health Statistics Branch

Project Focus Area:

Examine the characteristics of health and disease among the pediatric Medicaid fee-for-service and managed care populations, using the linked National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and Medicaid Analytic (MAX) files.

Project Description:

In collaboration with senior researchers, the Fellow will initiate projects using the newly created NHIS/MAX Medicaid administrative data linked files. These data files contain individual-level Medicaid eligibility and utilization information linked to the detailed health and demographic data collected from the NCHS national surveys. Although linked NHIS/MAX Medicaid files are adjusted during analysis such that the population of children eligible for linkage is nationally representative in terms of race, age, and sex, it is not known whether children eligible for linkage are nationally representative in terms of disease prevalence and measures of health. In addition, myriad analyses can be conducted using the claims data of children with fee-for-service Medicaid plans. However, as Managed care plans account for an ever-increasing percentage of children in Medicaid, it is not clear whether children with fee-for-service Medicaid are representative of children with Managed care Medicaid plans in terms of disease prevalence and health measures.

This fellowship will focus primarily on analyses to answer these questions, and then, as time allows, use these data for further research. Specific further topics of research (child health conditions, disparities, statistical methodology, etc.) can be determined by the interest and background of the Fellow. The current interest in usage of the linked data underscore the importance of understanding the representativeness of the linked population to the entire Medicaid population, and the representativeness of the Medicaid-fee-for-service population to the entire Medicaid population, including managed care.

It is anticipated that these research activities will result in one or more published reports or journal articles. Ample support in epidemiology, medicine, statistics, and economics, as well as IT assistance, is available within the Office.

Location

The fellowship location is the Hyattsville, Maryland office of NCHS. Hyattsville is a suburb of Washington D.C., about 1 mile from the University of Maryland College Park campus and 10 miles from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda. This allows easy inter­change between the numerous public health researchers working at the various agencies and institutions located in the national capital area. It is easily accessible from downtown Washington by Metrorail.

For more information visit: www.aptrweb.org/?page=fellowships_cdc