Across much of the U.S., a person who’s poor, overweight and a candidate for obesity-related diseases might not visit a doctor until they’ve already contracted diabetes — that is, if they can even find a physician who will accept Medicaid, the federal health insurance program aimed at the neediest Americans.
But in Connecticut, they’re doing things differently. There, state employees actually reach out to those at the greatest risk before they’ve exhibited any noticeable symptoms, then work diligently to connect them with the right care. Doctors are paid a bonus for getting a patient to see the appropriate specialists, and out-of-the-box arrangements are made when other solutions prove necessary; a low-income senior facing eviction, for example, might be given a “prescription” of a rental voucher so that she can remain in her own neighborhood.
In treating poverty as an ailment in and of itself, Connecticut has adopted a proactive approach to improving the health of its poorest residents — and it’s saving money in the process. After switching to a rarely used Medicaid payment model, known as fee-for-service (FFS), the state faced a daunting challenge: Keep those unable to pay out of the emergency room, or see its budget eaten up by soaring medical costs.
Here’s how it works: Using the extensive data collected from all Medicaid patients, the state’s predictive modeling identifies those most in danger of expensive, chronic ailments like diabetes. Then, says Dr. Robert Zavoski, a former pediatrician who now serves as the state’s medical director, “We make sure they’re getting preventive care so that, 10 years from now, we’re not paying for dialysis for renal dysfunction and amputations for limbs that would have been better left where they were.”
After Connecticut dropped three private companies who administered its Medicaid program and decided to run the massive entitlement on its own, other states practically took bets on when the system would implode.
“They patted us on the head and said, ‘Good luck with that,’” Kate McEvoy, who oversees all of Connecticut’s public health services, recalls of the 2010 decision.
In booting private insurance companies off the job (in Hartford, a city that’s known as the insurance capital of the world, no less), Connecticut was bucking a trend. Thirty-nine other states, representing nearly three-quarters of the nation’s enrollees, have hired managed-care organizations, or MCOs, to oversee Medicaid, with even more governors pondering following suit. Of the rest, only Alaska and Wyoming have a system like Connecticut’s.
Without relying on MCOs to set standards and manage the process, Connecticut’s been on the hook for whatever care its Medicaid population requires, which can include check-ups, specialist visits and hospital drop-ins. The looming receipts have created an incentive for Connecticut to keep its poor healthy.
The tactic has already paid off in the short term and promises to deliver even bigger dividends in the future.
According to a recent analysis of federal payment data published in the journal Health Affairs, Connecticut led the nation in reducing Medicaid costs. The state’s per-patient spending on Medicaid dropped by an average of 5.7 percent each year between 2010 and 2014. One explanation is simple. “We got rid of [the MCOs’] profit and overhead,” says Ellen Andrews, the head of Connecticut Health Policy Project, a nonpartisan analyst. But officials also believe, financially and morally, they’ll do better by paying upfront.
“The old adage went, ‘If you can predict something, you can prevent it.’ And yet as a practitioner, when we look at the population of inner-city children, a lot of stuff was happening that you could predict but nobody was preventing anything,” Zavoski says. “Standing in the capital city in the richest state in the richest country in the world, that’s not acceptable.”
Under Connecticut’s FFS system, primary care doctors are given bonuses for coordinating their Medicaid patients’ care. “They don’t just say, ‘You have a heart problem.’ They’ll make an appointment with a cardiologist and follow-up,” Andrews says.
Paying out doctor bonuses won’t break the bank, but other preventive measures do involve five-figure decisions. Previously, under managed care, insurers denied coverage of top-dollar treatments — exclusions the state has now reversed. For example, Connecticut will pay $94,500 for a prescription that cures Hepatitis C, with the confidence that it will lower costs in the long run. Zavoski reasons that a one-time course of drugs, paired with education about reinfection, might be cheaper than a lifetime supply of the older pills, which put the patient at risk of severe liver and kidney damage.
Of course, the resources might not always be there. As Connecticut’s legislature faces a massive budget deficit that could slash health programs and congressional Republicans attempt to dismantle Obamacare’s expansion, Medicaid is under constant assault. But if the Nutmeg State has one lesson for the rest of the country, it’s that deferring treatment will cost us later — in dollars and in lives.
Homepage photo courtesy of Joe Raedle/Getty Images.
Continue reading “In Connecticut, Saving Lives Comes With an Unexpected Perk: Saving Money”
Tag: connecticut
Why It’s Important for Children to Learn Mindfulness at a Young Age
Mindfulness, a secular form of meditation based on old Buddhist practices, is gaining popularity in more and more workplaces, but it still isn’t broadly available in most communities. In New Canaan, Conn., residents Nick and Michelle Seaver, Will Heins, and Erika Long banded together to offer group sessions in public institutions like libraries and wellness centers that help locals train their awareness on their physical existence in the present moment.
NationSwell spoke with Long, a former managing director at J.P. Morgan Chase and founder of the Carpere Group, about how she found meaning in mindfulness after quitting her career in finance.
How did you first become interested in mindfulness?
I was on a business trip to Tokyo and couldn’t fall asleep. In the nightstand next to the bed were the teachings of Buddha. I started reading it and thought the lessons were really interesting. Then I began investigating more about Buddhism and learning that meditation was really a core practice for that spiritual tradition. The more I read, the more it resonated with me. I was leading a very, very busy life in investment banking at the time, and soon after, I had two kids. I spent so much time in my head, trying to figure out investments, that mindfulness really helped me to integrate the mind and the body — to check in and make sure I wasn’t missing stuff that was going on outside my head. And I found that meditation allowed a lot of the clutter in my mind to settle, so that when decisions needed to be made, the path forward became more evident.
What advice do you have for someone who’s just starting to dabble in meditation?
We’re not a culture that supports sitting down without distraction. For some reason, you can justify doing a ton of other things, even if it’s just the crossword puzzle on the train on the way in or looking at Facebook. Some people have to overcome that as a hurdle.
Other people find that their mind won’t stop, and they get frustrated. We say that it’s very difficult to enter meditation or mindfulness thinking with the goal to keep thoughts out, to keep the mind quiet. It’s much easier to engage in the practice if you think when thoughts arise — because they will — choosing not to engage in them, not to get carried away with them, letting them arise and carry on their way.
What do you hope to accomplish through the Community Mindfulness Project (CMP)?
Originally four [founders] lived in the same town, and we all felt tremendous benefit from our own personal meditation practices over the years. But we had a hard time finding a community that we could sit with. There’s a real power to sitting in a group in addition to one’s own personal daily practice: you learn from each other, get support and feel a tremendous energy that arises when you sit in stillness with others. We started with one hour on a Monday night, and it grew and grew. We had the class coming in from lots of different places, asking “Could you do it here? Could you work with the kids in this school? With the teachers in this program?”
The more we looked around, we realized that there weren’t other secular, regular meditation or mindfulness sessions that were free and open to the public on an ongoing basis in community hubs. We offer regular weekly sessions in libraries and wellness centers in New Canaan and Stamford, Conn. We’re expanding out, particularly targeting communities with high numbers of stressors: food, housing and job insecurity, as well as people with other special needs like patients going through chemotherapy (as we’re currently doing at New York-Presbyterian Hospital).
Mindfulness is showing up in more places. What uses are you most excited about right now?
Maybe just because I’m a mom of a couple of teenagers, I feel that very little children are very much in the present moment, and as they get older, all of the adults in their lives and the media influences that they see begin to yank them out of the present moment. They’re sitting down every day with this notion that everything they’re doing in that moment is for the future somehow. It makes it really hard for them just to sit in the present. That’s right about the same time they need to be really connected with their bodies, and they need to be building habits and patterns for self-care. I love the extent to which people are thinking how we show kids these practices so that they can bring them into their lives, during those middle and high school years.
What’s on your nightstand?
I’m reading “It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War,” by Lynsey Addario. She was a photographer for The New York Times, and that feeds my love of trying to push myself outside my comfort zone by reading about other people’s lives. And I’ve just been given, by someone in our community, “Buddha’s Brain,” by Rick Hanson, which really is the boiled-down neuroscience behind mindfulness. Then there’s a beautiful book called “Natural Wakefulness: Discovering the Wisdom We Were Born With,” by Gaylon Ferguson.
What’s your perfect day?
I have to say the perfect day would involve no technology whatsoever. It would involve time with my kids. I’m at that point where I’m very aware they’re going to be heading off on their own soon, so I’m cherishing every moment that I have with them right now. And it would involve being outside. There’s something about the outdoors that really grounds us in the present moment and gives us the sense of connection as part of something better. And there’s some kind of food involved. If we have those elements, it doesn’t really matter what we’re doing.
What’s your proudest accomplishment?
I worked with amazing people in investment banking. I could not believe how lucky I was to be able to do what I did. I felt like every day the world was my university. I learned so much. But I’m really proud of the fact that I got off that treadmill, even though there were financial ramifications. It wasn’t tapping into a deep need to do something that was more meaningful. I’m proud that I was able to sacrifice the identity that comes with having that job.
One of the CMP cofounders, Michelle Seaver, is from Canada, and she said one of the things she noticed most when she moved to the Northeast is that when people ask, “What do you do?” in Vancouver, the answer is “I waterski. I play tennis.” In the Northeast, it’s all about your job. After having a career for so long, when you go out into public and somebody asks, “What do you do?” you’re no longer able to say, “I manage money, I’m in finance.” There’s that open-ended “I am.” That can be really unsettling, and you have to dig deep inside and figure out where you pull your own identity from. Can you have the courage just to let that be? It’s a beautiful process to go through, and you don’t go through it when you’re on the treadmill of your career. I’m proud of that because my kids watched me do it. Hopefully, that will give them the freedom in their life to pursue what they’re passionate about.
To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
MORE: 37 Easy Strategies for Living in the Moment All Day Long
This Lifelong Hunter Aims to Make Guns Safer — By Making Them Smarter
As a resident of Weston, Conn., about two towns over from Newtown and the father of a first-grader, Don Kendall, Jr., was deeply affected by the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. But rather than signing petitions or making calls to legislators, he teamed up with more than 40 investors, including venture capitalist Ron Conway and serial entrepreneur Jim Pitkow to launch the Smart Tech Foundation, which funds smart gun technologies.
In advance of a NationSwell Council event on gun violence solutions, Kendall spoke about the need for readily available, safer guns.
What led you to look beyond changing laws as the best way to reduce gun violence?
Until [Newtown], my work was really focused on education and social entrepreneurship; gun violence is not an area that I was schooled in. But I took the time to get to know the space well and met all the organizations I could to understand their theories of change and the key issues. Pretty quickly, I became convinced that traditional political advocacy to change this issue was a dead end. The business model of Washington is to take money from people on either side of this issue: you might not like guns so I give money to the National Rifle Association (NRA) to stop people like you, and you give money to the Democratic Party to stop people like me. It was promoting an us versus them. It was gridlock, and I didn’t want to contribute to that.
I took my bedrock beliefs in technology, innovation, capitalism, the rule of free markets and the feeling that business can solve big social problems, and I went looking for other ways to get involved. I came at the issue from the standpoint of believing I could play a bridging role because I am a gun-owner and a lifelong hunter, but I also saw what was happening to 30,000 people dying every year in thousands of accidents and thousands of suicides. I thought that could be stopped, but it would take somebody saying, “I’m one of you, and we can make a difference on this.” That was the impetus, the genesis of Smart Tech.
How does Smart Tech identify a promising smart gun technologies to invest in?
This industry is in its infancy. These projects are literally two guys in a garage kind of stuff. The amount of money that is flowing right now is miniscule. We take the classic venture approach: You look for a mix of different approaches, whether it’s some folks working on actual firearms, other products like gun locks and safes, and then the technology that needed to be baked into everything like user-recognition, biometrics and RFID (radio-frequency identification). We wanted to have a mix of things that we were fostering. Again, as a nonprofit, the goal is to stimulate innovation and bring attention to the whole space and not focus on any one effort.
What innovations in your field are you most excited about right now?
In the context of gun violence, you’re talking about building an entire ecosystem that didn’t exist and hopefully making people rich at the same time that they’re reducing the number of people that are killed every year, right? There’s an opportunity to do both. The analog that we researched for Smart Tech was the number of people killed and injured by automobiles. The story of automobile fatalities over the last four decades is one of constantly chipping away at the problem. It’s through government regulation mandating airbags, two-point safety belts and different rules for signage and how roads are constructed, but manufacturers also stepped in. Safer cars are ones you can charge a premium for. Thousands of different businesses have been started because of that, and a lot of wealth has been created. At the same time, the number of people killed or injured by cars has gone down and down and down. That, to me, is what’s exciting about doing the same thing in the gun space — if we can just get markets working the way that they should work and breaking some of these market failures that are blocking innovation right now.
What do you wish someone had told you when you started this job?
I transitioned from being a for-profit entrepreneur to being a “philanthropist,” whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean, at age 42. I had started a bunch of companies, a few had done very well, so suddenly I literally woke up with enough money in the bank for me and my family. It was sort of like, “Okay, well what am I gonna do now?” Looking back, it took me about six years to answer that question. The key insight for me (and this is maybe not everybody) was realizing that I could still be the person that I am, namely a serial entrepreneur who loves startups, frontier spaces and uncertainty, at the same time that I’m a philanthropist. When that lightbulb went off for me, it changed everything.
With so much gridlock stopping solutions to gun violence in Washington, D.C., and statehouses nationwide, what inspires you to tackle this problem?
It’s my first experience in a market where there’s a huge headwind, and that is extremely frustrating. I’m not going to say that it’s been fun, but I believe very strongly that I have some role to play in solving this social problem. If we can just get the markets working the way that they’re supposed to work, we can start making headway and saving lives. The stakes are pretty high. The stance of the NRA and the gun manufacturers lobby is wrong from a historical standpoint. They’ve chosen a stance on this issue that is against the arc of history, and I think they’ll ultimately be proven wrong. I believe that there’s white space in this industry for a successful company or a whole cluster of successful companies that can disrupt this industry, because the stance taken by the leaders is just wrong. It’s ripe for that disruption.
What don’t most people know about you that they should?
In addition to being a serial entrepreneur, I did grow up with a lot of privileges. Yes, I started a bunch of companies, and some are successful. But my dad was chairman and CEO of PepsiCo. He was a legendary business leader. I grew up in a wealthy setting, and it also meant that he wanted to help me. He was willing to pick up the phone. That was a huge advantage. I was acquainted with privilege, but I also had a real strong desire to stand on my own two feet and be a success on my own terms. That’s an aspect to my bio and my background, that if I’m being authentic and transparent like I’m trying to be, that needs to be factored in.
To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
MORE: Gun Violence Devastated This Man’s Family. He’s Determined to Not Let It Happen to Others
The Visionary That’s Getting Everyone to the Table to Talk About Social Good
This February, on the exact same day, two governors from two very different states — Nikki Haley, a Republican in South Carolina, and Dan Malloy, a Democrat in Connecticut — both announced social impact bonds to promote family care: one for low-income moms, the other for parents struggling with substance abuse. Both of these bonds (also known as “pay for success”) deployed private dollars to fund the scaling of a social program. If the project succeeds in meeting specific, predesigned metrics, the private backers will profit from their investment; if not, taxpayers don’t owe a penny more. Behind both of these innovative, cross-sector partnerships was Tracy Palandjian, CEO of Social Finance, a nonprofit intermediary between all the parties, who helped bring the “pay for success” model to the United States after seeing it first implemented in England in 2010.
NationSwell spoke with Palandjian by phone from Boston about the daily obstacles and excitements that come with rethinking how American social services can reach more people in need.
What’s the best advice you have ever been given on leadership?
I have two. The first one is an African proverb: “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go with others.” Just because one has a great idea and one could often accomplish a lot more, going at it alone is often insufficient if you really want to deliver a movement. That’s hugely evident in our work here. Imagine these very funky public-private nonprofit partnerships with so many stakeholders with very divergent motivations. What motivates a private investor? A sitting governor or mayor? The executive directors of these classic human service providers? We have everyone sit around a table to articulate a common goal — in this case, delivering results to our communities — when they have often conflicting frameworks and very different languages they speak in and very different world-views. Bringing them together around a very common goal among very uncommon stakeholders is something that we have found, yes, it’s challenging, but if we can rally this forth, we see enduring, powerful results coming out of those partnerships.
By way of background for my other one: I didn’t grow up in this country. I’m Chinese, and I grew up in Hong Kong. My grandfather whom I was very close to, his favorite quote was (translated to English): “Distance tests the strength of forces, time tests the hearts of men.” It really is a message about patience. A lot of things take time, and the people who can stay steadfast on that vision could achieve the most. My grandfather was born in 1903 in China. He took his courageous wife — my grandmother — and, at that point, four children, and literally fled the Second Wold War on foot, by boat and by train out of China into Hong Kong and then to Taiwan ultimately. He was a chemical engineer, completely self-taught. He left everything behind when he fled. Along the way, he lost two children. After they made it to safety, he started all over again. He made consumer batteries and completely rebuilt himself, his family and his business. I always think about their lives and what they were able to overcome and what they were able to accomplish. Sometimes, we take three steps backward to take five steps forward.
What’s your favorite book of all time?
One of my favorite books, which I’m proud to say is the namesake of our eldest daughter: a Chinese classic, “Tao Te Ching.” It’s just so poetic and so poignant about how one should live. And it’s full of these non-intuitive sentences like, “It is through being effortless that you can achieve the most.”
What innovations in your field are you most excited about right now?
Taking a step back, social impact bonds are probably the latest and the most recent comer to this broader investing landscape. I agree there’s been a lot of hype, but the reason why people are excited about it is that the impact is so direct. When our investors get their money back and then some, it’s because somebody’s life has been improved. This very articulated, metric-driven all-around life improvement, whether it’s recidivism or job attainment or education attainment or improved health outcomes, these are the metrics of each of our deals. Someone’s life improvement is the source of the return back to the investor, and that connection is really powerful. While the field started off in criminal justice (and still a lot of projects are focused on reducing recidivism), we’re excited to see there are a lot of projects in early education, in early childhood, in health and in workforce development.
How do you try to inspire others?
I just try to be who I am. I believe, as a person, I’m best when I’m aligned as a human being and I’m 100 percent authentic. I don’t try to say something because it will inspire others. I don’t try to do something because, well, that’s what I believe a good leader should do. I try to model good behavior for my colleagues. I’m not perfect, I have lots of limitations. I try to be a good parent and model good behavior for our children. I feel very strongly about this; I feel like there are too many lessons and advice that people give. People just need to be authentic.
What’s your proudest accomplishment?
I am probably most proud of the fact that I really think that I understand two cultures perfectly well. Obviously, I grew up in my own [Chinese] culture. My whole family’s still in that part of the world. You never forget your own culture and your native language. But I also think I’ve worked in America long enough and I’ve worked with enough different sectors and different kinds of people that I really understand how this country and this culture works, too. I think that’s just a huge skill to be able to be empathetic, to be able to step into the shoes of others. I think it’s a really important skill to have, especially for our work, which requires us to talk across sectors and work across disciplines.
What don’t most people know about you that they should?
I’m an artist at heart. That’s what I did as a young kid, all throughout high school and college, I painted a lot, I drew a lot, I experimented with all kinds of mediums. I miss that part of my life. I haven’t done much since I graduated from college. Now, I watch my kids do it, and it makes me very happy.
To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Why Youthful Indiscretions Shouldn’t Result in Jail Sentences, How to Save Babies Born with Opioid Addictions and More
A Prosecutor’s Vision For A Better Justice System, TED
Adam Foss, a prosecutor with the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office in Boston, recently asked a group of TED participants how many had ever drank underage, tried an illegal drug, shoplifted or gotten into a physical fight. While viewed by most as youthful indiscretions, these same offenses often land black and brown youth in criminal court, viewed as being dangerous to society. Which is why Foss is using prosecutorial discretion to dismiss minor cases that aren’t worthy of a criminal record.
Tiny Opioid Patients Need Help Easing Into Life, Kaiser Health News and NPR
In this country, addiction to heroin and prescription painkillers like hydrocodone, oxycodone or morphine continues to rise, even afflicting new moms. During pregnancy, these mothers must decide between getting clean and risking a miscarriage or delivering a baby that’s likely to experience drug withdrawal. With about 21,000 infants suffering from withdrawal each year, doctors in Rhode Island, nurses in Connecticut, researchers in Pennsylvania and public health officials in Ohio are all working on solutions to help these new families.
Website Seeks to Make Government Data Easier to Sift Through, New York Times
Just because the government releases endless pages of data to the public doesn’t mean it’s easy to turn those statistics into something that you can actually comprehend and use. DataUSA, an open source brainchild coming from the M.I.T. Media Lab, organizes and visualizes the information, presenting it in charts, graphs and written synopses. Thanks to this project, instead of just hearing a statistic of how many people in Flint, Mich., live in poverty, for example, you can see it visually represented on a map.
These Yoga Teachers Empower Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Survivors to Reclaim Their Lives
Tara Tonini slept with a shotgun. After months of being in a violent relationship, she found the strength to leave and get her own apartment, but her abuser was stalking her and threatened her life.
Sadly, Tonini’s experience isn’t unique.
In the United States, about one in four women will experience domestic violence during her life, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. It’s extremely dangerous for a battered woman to leave an abusive partner, and those who are brave enough to do so often suffer from PTSD for years.
Tonini is now the program director of Exhale to Inhale, a nonprofit that brings free yoga classes to shelters and community centers that serve domestic violence and sexual assault survivors. It also trains volunteer instructors to lead trauma-informed yoga classes. Tonini credits yoga for where she is today.
Check out the video above and witness how the regular practice of yoga can help trauma survivors in tremendous ways.
MORE: Meet the Doctors Building an Innovative, Holistic Bridge to Healthy Living
This Common Sense Program Could Be the Future of Mental Health Care Nationwide
What would you do if your teenage son or daughter began expressing paranoid thoughts? Jumbling their sentences? Exhibiting bizarre behavior? Few parents know the warning signs of psychosis, but one joint effort in Connecticut is aiming to change that.
The state’s Department of Mental Health & Addiction Services and Yale University are pioneering MindMap, an outreach program designed to catch the early signs of a young person experiencing a psychotic episode, lessening the chance of self-harm or endangerment to others.
Mindmap’s creation is the result of university psychiatrists discovering that patients who received early treatment at community clinics reduced their risks of future psychotic breaks. Their findings also show that those who get help early on remain employed or in school 92 percent of time, compared to just 67 percent when receiving standard treatment. Even better? Three out of four avoided hospitalizations in the first year (as opposed to half), saving taxpayer dollars.
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Patients receiving treatment at Yale’s Specialized Treatment Early in Psychosis (STEP) clinic are set up with a team of caseworkers, which coordinates medication, counseling and social skills training for the patient and education for their family, whose guilt or frustration at the disease can often exacerbate symptoms. (The lack of vital long-term care has been identified as the reason why our mental health system has largely failed after state-run institutions shuttered in the 1960s.)
“Traditionally, people show up to psychiatric care after many years of suffering and poor functioning. Maybe they got psychiatrically committed in a hospital against their will, maybe they were picked up by the police or became homeless,” says STEP clinical director Jessica Pollard. “We try to catch people as soon as they have noticeable symptoms, whether it is full-blown and diagnosable psychosis or signs of something to come.”
Hallucinations, delusions, disorganized speech or excessive motor activity can be caused by, say, stress or substance abuse, but they can also be symptoms of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or severe depression. And while diagnoses have improved, mental health centers still struggle with the stigmas associated with psychosis.
“People don’t tend to show up on their own for care,” Pollard says. “They’re really embarrassed. They don’t want anyone to know.”
As many as one in every 29 people will experience some form of psychosis — generally defined as losing contact with reality — within their lifetime, according to one study. Psychiatrists know that most people have their first psychotic episode in their late teens or early twenties and reaching people at this early age is key, Yale’s psychiatrists say. It’s when the risk of relapse into psychotic episodes is highest and when two-thirds of suicides triggered by the disease occur.
“The model is a pragmatic, effective and economically feasible,” Vinod Srihari, professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, says in a statement. “The message is simple,” he adds. “The earlier, the better.”
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The Smallest State’s Big Move to Build College Savings
Newborn infants in Rhode Island will leave the hospital with two things: a birth certificate and bank account.
Starting this month, the Ocean State is streamlining an existing college savings program known as CollegeBoundBaby. Since the initiative’s start in 2010, enrolled infants each receive $100 in a 529 savings plan from Rhode Island, but it’s been highly underutilized due to a unwieldy application that required parents to supply multiple pages of information and pick an investment strategy. As a result, only 400 families enrolled, according to the Providence Journal.
But now, parents can now sign up the day their child is born by simply checking a box on the birth certificate form, a small fix that the newly elected governor hopes will boost the program’s reach.
“The system now requires parents to take the initiative to open an account,” says Governor Gina Raimondo, the state’s first female governor. “With this program, before the parents leave the hospital, all they have to do is put an X in the right box and boom, the account will be set up.”
Here’s why this simplification matters: More than one-third of all Americans have no money in savings and even fewer have funds stored away for college. Many low-income youth will leave college burdened by debt, if they choose to attend at all. State governments like Connecticut and a cluster of nonprofits are aiming to change that by incentivizing families to open 529 accounts by fronting the initial seed deposit. (It’s worth noting that there can be cons to putting money in a 529 plan, so families should always look at the specifics before investing.)
The small cash incentive not only provides some economic certainty, it also forces the parents to think about long-term financial planning and sets goals to which young people can aspire. It’s proven to work. Studies show children with dedicated savings for higher education are seven times as likely to attend college. (For those not seeking a B.A., money in 529 accounts can be used to pay for trade, technical or vocational school; if not used by age 25, it reverts back to a state’s education fund.) Even beyond the benefits that come with a college degree like higher job earnings, one study found that just having a bank account aids children’s social and emotional development and correlates with optimism and decreased depression for the children’s mothers.
“From the research, we know that kids who have a college savings account, regardless of the amount, are much more likely to get an education beyond high school and graduate,” says Raimondo, a Democrat who previously served as Rhode Island’s state treasurer. “Some think it is because they have the money. The real reason is they know they are college material. It changes the way they think about themselves.”
Because the underlying principle is that families can advance themselves through smart fiscal planning, college savings accounts have bipartisan appeal to both Republicans and Democrats, Andrea Levere, president of the Corporation for Enterprise Development, notes in a New York Times op-ed. The accounts have a number of models — publicly funded, donor-supported or a mix — but so far, they haven’t taken off widely: only about 200,000 young kids have the potential to receive seed money for one instead of the millions who should have access, Levere says.
Rhode Island’s streamlining of the process could improve the national model. According to Margaret Clancy, policy director at Washington University’s Center for Social Development in St. Louis, where researchers first posited college accounts in 1991, this initiative makes Rhode Island one of only three states promising universal savings accounts. Nevada starts every kindergartner with a $50 deposit, and Maine recently switched their $500 grants from opt-in to opt-out, automatically applying to every infant.
“Everybody thinks their child will grow up to be President of the United States or go to college when they’re born, but what we see is that at age 4, those goals have decreased in a lot of people’s mindsets,” Clancy tells NationSwell. Children never develop a “college-bound identity,” then financial and academic preparation fall by the wayside. Universal sign-ups, which have proven to enroll 18 times as many families as would sign up voluntarily, Clancy notes, are the most efficient way to set babies crawling in the right direction.
Raimondo admits this largely bureaucratic change is “hard and unsexy work,” but she believes “it’s going to really change people’s behavior. Small changes like this can have big, powerful impacts.”
In These 8 States, Students Are Going to Be Served Healthier School Lunches
A new pilot program aimed at encouraging states to purchase locally-sourced food will bring more fresh produce to school meals across eight states.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced California, Connecticut, Michigan, New York, Oregon, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin will be able to use some of their USDA Foods allocation toward unprocessed fruits and vegetables from local farms rather than going through the USDA Foods program.
The Pilot Project for Procurement of Unprocessed Fruits and Vegetables, which falls under the Agricultural Act of 2014 (Farm Bill), was created to not only promote farm-to-table meals, but also help schools strengthen relationships with vendors, growers, wholesalers and distributors, according to the USDA.
USDA Foods comprises about 20 percent of foods served in schools, with schools using their allocation from a list of 180 items including fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, rice, low fat cheese, beans, pasta, flour and other whole grain products. Under the new program, schools will be able to substitute those allocations for fresher, local options.
“Providing pilot states with more flexibility in the use of their USDA Foods’ dollars offers states another opportunity to provide schoolchildren with additional fruits and vegetables from within their own communities,” says Kevin Concannon, USDA Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services. “When schools invest food dollars into local communities, all of agriculture benefits, including local farmers, ranchers, fishermen, food processors and manufacturers.”
States were selected on criteria including a commitment to farm-to-school efforts, previous promotion initiatives, the variety and abundance of fruit and vegetable growers in the state on a per capita basis, as well as how diverse the state’s educational agencies are in size and geography.
For states like Connecticut, the program not only promotes the local economy, but also helps children form more nutritional habits of buying fresh, local produce.
“Connecticut’s participation in this federal pilot is great news for our farmers, our economy and our children,” says Governor Dannel P. Malloy. “Our state is home to thousands of farming operations responsible for billions in economic activity. By increasing the amount locally-sourced healthy food options for our students, we help lay a foundation for lifelong successful habits.”
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This Injured Vet’s Motto: Keep Moving
After attending the University of Connecticut’s Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities, South Kingstown, R.I.-based veteran Steve D’Amico emerged with a bright idea.
D’Amico, a Rhode Island Air National Guard Technical Sgt., wants to help other injured veterans remain active through his new business, Broken Gear. He tells the Associated Press that the company “was founded on the principle of disabled athletes empowering themselves to get back into sports, whether they’re disabled veterans or disabled civilians.”
So far, Broken Gear is selling a variety of t-shirts with messages to inspire disabled athletes and their supporters, such as, “I am broken and I run,” and “I am broken and I ride.” D’Amico’s company also sells camouflaged gear bags made from uniforms of servicemen and women and specially designed to be easy to use by people who have prosthetic hands or suffer from other injuries.
As D’Amico sells these items, he has plans to use the profits to support disabled athletes, “buying equipment and getting vets involved in different activities,” D’Amico says. “For example if a veteran wanted to ride a bike, and didn’t have the funds or the ability, we can sponsor him, get him a bike, get him the Broken Gear jersey and pay for his admission.”
His mission just received a big boost: Work Vessels for Veterans presented D’Amico with a Dodge Durango (which was once used to transport Boy Scouts to camping trips) that he envisions using to take veterans and their sporting gear wherever they need to go.
“I feel so honored. To me, when I see this vehicle, this is what a Broken Gear vehicle would be. It’s rugged. It’s tough. It’s kind of beat up a little bit, but that’s what we’re looking for. You’ve been through the ringer, but that’s OK, you just press on,” D’Amico says.
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