Wednesday, February 10, 2016
Milbank Memorial Fund: How Do State Health Policy Meetings Make A Difference?
Like many other nonprofits, the Milbank Memorial Fund (MMF) spends time assessing the impact of its work, which is guided by its mission of improving population health by connecting leaders and decision makers with the best evidence and experience. Staff recently gathered around a flow chart, armed with sticky notes, assessing how we might determine if our peer-reviewed journal, The Milbank Quarterly; our reports; and our work with state leaders are having an impact.
At the top of our list of impact measures was this—“the health of a population improves because of actions taken with evidence and experience we have identified or coordinated.” This lofty goal turned the conversation to the Reforming States Group (RSG), a bipartisan voluntary association of state health policy leaders from both the executive and legislative branches, which we have supported for twenty-three years. If any of the groups we engage with regularly could take action to improve population health based on evidence and experience provided by us, we would hope it would be the RSG. . .