Research

o better understand how best to decrease inappropriate antibiotic prescribing for ARIs in telehealth, we are conducting a large randomized quality improvement trial testing both patient- and physician-facing feedback and behavioral nudges embedded in the electronic health record.

Males live shorter lives than women in all countries. The universality of shorter male life expectancy is a 21st Century phenomena. It occurs with the decline in infectious diseases and the rise in cardiovascular diseases accounting for mortality.

USC-Brookings Schaeffer Initiative experts focus on three areas of FDA authority that could be refined to better promote generic competition: the Citizen Petition mechanism; the approval of so-called complex generic drugs; and the phenomenon known as “parking” under the Hatch-Waxman Act.

In 2007 we published a trial of home-based palliative care (HBPC) conducted in a managed care organization (MCO) that found significant improvements in patient satisfaction with health care, rates of home deaths, and reductions in health care use and costs.

Since 2020, COVID-19 has infected tens of millions and caused hundreds of thousands of fatalities in the United States. Infection waves lead to increased emergency department utilization and critical care admission for patients with respiratory distress. Although many individuals develop symptoms necessitating a ventilator, some patients with COVID-19 can remain at home to mitigate hospital overcrowding. Remote pulse-oximetry (pulse-ox) monitoring of moderately ill patients with COVID-19 can be used to monitor symptom escalation and trigger hospital visits, as needed.

Tactics used by intermediaries in the pharmaceutical distribution system, including pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and insurers, are costing patients, employers and the government billions for what should be inexpensive medicines.

Scheffer Center experts examine how three epigenetic aging measures are associated with parental smoking, smoking in youth, and smoking in adulthood, and whether these epigenetic aging measures mediate the link between smoke exposure and morbidity and mortality.

Schaeffer experts identified identified key cannabis policies and their provisions enacted by U.S. states; rated their theoretical efficacy in a restrictive form for reducing problematic use and impaired driving in the context of a recreational cannabis market as judged by experts; and rated the strength of evidence for each policy.

Schaeffer experts estimate the primary care prevalence of medical cannabis use according to confidential patient survey and to compare the prevalence of medical cannabis use documented in the EHR with patient report.