2019 AcademyHealth National Health Policy Conference

General Information

The AcademyHealth National Health Policy Conference (NHPC) brings together health care decision-makers, advocates, consumers, patients, researchers and leaders from the public and private sectors to discuss the health policy agenda for the year ahead in the context of the existing evidence base, its strengths and limitations.

The 2019 Call for Proposals is intended to give researchers, policymakers, policy and market analysts, and the professionals who connect them, an opportunity to provide timely examples of policy innovation, implementation and/or evaluation, emphasizing how evidence has been used or could be used in the years ahead to either inform, develop and/or evaluate federal and/or state policy. Importantly, policy is defined to encompass legislative, regulatory, administrative, or legal policy. Timely evidence at this time of significant uncertainty and upheaval in health policy is critical. This year, we are also encouraging submissions related to science policy given current debates about the value, role and contributions of science to advancing the public good and developments in open science. Science policy topics include how research is funded, governed, disseminated and valued by policymakers.

Proposals for the 2019 NHPC are encouraged to include:

• i. A description of the policy topic, innovation, implementation, or evaluation with special attention given to whether and how evidence and/or data was or could be used, and if not, why not; and
• ii. How the proposed presentation relates to current health and/or science policy debates at the local, state or federal level.

Proposals that describe lessons learned in policy development and implementation and help us understand how policy influences and/or changes healthcare systems, practices, and community level transformation are especially welcome. In addition, Policy Roundtables (see below) should reflect multiple points of view to maximize diversity of participants, perspectives and balance.

Submissions will be peer-reviewed and selected sessions will be presented at NHPC, along with invited sessions developed by the 2019 National Health Policy Conference Advisory Committee.

Instructions and Needed Information for Submitting a Presentation:

1. Theme

   Select the current policy theme that best fits your submission:

   • Federalism and State Innovation
     • Re-balancing the federal-state relationship
     • The role of administrative (including regulatory) flexibility to support state and local innovation
     • States use of waivers – 1115 and 1332
     • Other aspects of entitlement reform in Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP
     • Improving long-term care and the continuum of care, including nursing homes, assisted living, and home and community based services.
   • Health Care Coverage and Access
     • The future of state marketplaces and other insurance market reforms
     • Benefit design and reforms
     • Single payer proposals - their strengths and weaknesses
     • Trends in coverage and access for different populations and in a variety of settings: children, women, urban, rural, resource-poor settings, etc…
   • Health Care Payment and Delivery System Reform
     • Future direction in quality and performance measurement, including
       • Evidence for quality measures that impact consumers, provider and treatment choices
       • Quality measure alignment efforts: updates on state, locality and payer efforts.
     • Implementation of MACRA/MIPS
     • Emerging evidence from alternative payment models across patient populations
     • Integrating care across settings, including
       • behavioral health, oral health, long-term services and supports, and/or community-based providers
     • Paying for value/identifying high value, addressing waste and low value care
     • Supply chain and value management
     • The role of technology and innovation, including digital health
     • Caring for high cost, high need patients
     • Addressing clinician burnout
     • Next generation of HIT policy
     • The impact of healthcare consolidation (including providers, drug manufacturers; PBMs; and insurers) on prices, access, quality and costs
   • Health Care Costs and Spending:
     • Affordability of insurance coverage
     • Cost sharing and consumer cost exposure, affordability, trends and impact
     • Drug prices and strategies to contain
     • Employer initiatives to address costs and improve valueOther private sector innovation, including technology, to address affordability, costs and spending
     • State efforts to address healthcare costs and spending
     • Strategies to control commercial sector prices
   • Social Determinants, Population Health and Health Equity
     • Effective models of healthcare systems tackling upstream determinants of health
     • State and local innovation to improve population health outcomes
     • Distributive impact of policies, including impact on safety net providers
     • Addressing health disparities and promoting health equity across populations, including racial/ethnic minorities, low SES, children, urban, rural, etc…
     • Policies to address diversity and inclusion and implicit bias
   • The Consumer Experience
     • Experience with consumer driven health plans, health savings accounts, and other benefit models
     • New approaches to providing consumers with truly relevant and actionable information on costs, choice, and quality.
     • Effective strategies to enable consumer and caregiver engagement at all levels of health care
     • Trends in industry approaches to address changing consumer demands
   • Other: This theme is meant to encompass additional timely topics that will be part of the policy agenda for the year ahead that do not fall within one of the other themes listed above and are relevant to the audience attending NHPC. Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:
     
     • Responding to the opioid epidemic
     • Impact of Federal policies on innovation, including biopharmaceutical and technology sectors
     • Science policy topics including the funding for research and infrastructure, policies that govern science (e.g. human subjects protection), policies that support open evidence and open science, trends in anti-science discourse
     • Balancing jobs and economic growth with constraining healthcare costs
     • Focus on wellness

2. Title

   • Enter your title in title case. Do not end titles with a period.
   • Enter the submitter's e-mail addresses where correspondence should be sent regarding the submission.
   • Answer any additional questions specific to the call that you are submitting to.

3. Author

   • Type the lead presenter's name in the provided box.
   • If the presenter is already in the system, you can select their pre-populated information or update the information from previous years.
   • If the presenter is not already in the system, you will be prompted to create a new record.
   • You must include information for all fields with a star.
   • To add additional co-presenters for the Policy Roundtables, click the 'add new author' button.
   • You can edit the order of the co-presenters by using the up and down arrows. The order they appear on the screen is the order they will be listed online.

4. Submission Text

   • Enter the text of your submission proposal (see specific word limit with session type below).

5. Confirmation

   • Review your submission.
   • You may return to any step of the process by using the left hand navigation bar.
   • You may print your submission at this point.
   • Once your submission is complete, press the 'conclude submission button'.
   • You may return to your submission to review or edit at any point before the September 27, 2018 deadline using the provided ID and password.

6. General Instructions

   • No names or titles should be included in the abstract text. Names will be automatically hidden during the abstract review process and will be automatically inserted and properly formatted upon publication.

   • Presenting authors will be automatically informed of the unique ID numbers and passwords assigned to their abstracts. Abstracts may be viewed and modified at any time between submission and the deadline, using the assigned ID# and password.

   • Instructions and Frequently Asked Questions are available to assist in your presentation.

   Technical Support

   For help in submitting an abstract online, Contact Technical Support.

Instructions and Frequently Asked Questions are available to assist in your presentation.

Begin a submission to the following: