AcademyHealth Blog

America’s children are getting sicker, with chronic and mental health conditions on the rise, trends worsened by the pandemic and felt most by underserved communities. Schools have become critical hubs for care, supported in part by Medicaid. In this three-part series, we’ll explore school Medicaid’s role and what’s at stake as policy changes, including H.R.1, threaten its future.

Much of today’s health communication assumes public trust in institutions was lost and simply needs to be restored. But for many communities, that trust was never fully established. Researchers from Germany, the UK, and the U.S. suggest the challenge is not becoming more persuasive, but becoming more trustworthy.

For a health system to advance equitable outcomes, equity must be intentionally built into a health system from the start, and international examples of health system funding design, reward systems, and accountability offer lessons for the United States.

Roughly one in three American women over 40 experience severe menopausal symptoms, yet only about one in four receive treatment, reflecting longstanding gaps in trust, access, and care. While menopause remains unaddressed in the U.S., countries such as Australia, England, and Ireland have pursued policies to improve coverage and affordability.

Global health conversations usually ask what developing countries can learn from wealthier ones. But decades of doing more with less have made many resource-constrained health systems quiet innovators—offering lessons in workforce strategy, data use, and research-to-practice speed that developed systems are only now catching up to. The author has made this post available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese; all three versions appear below.

Professional Development Council panelists share insights from 2026 ARM Session, emphasizing leadership as a practice, offering perspectives on five types of leadership challenges, and describing attributes and skills that leaders can use to manage through uncertainty and instability, and create adaptable, resilient teams.

As part of AcademyHealth’s Work Interrupted: Voices from the Field blog series, which explores the human toll of workforce disruptions, this story begins with a return from maternity leave that quickly became a front-row view of a workplace unraveling and a future shifting out of reach.

The Health Datapalooza 2026 agenda is taking shape around the practical challenges of turning data and technology into better decisions, stronger systems, and better care. Explore a first look at the conversations bringing together leaders from health systems, government, industry, research, and patient advocacy this September.

For decades, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has funded research that helps make health care safer, more effective, and more affordable. Now, after a year of staffing cuts, funding delays, and unprecedented disruption, the agency’s ability to carry out that mission is rapidly unraveling.