From Inquiry to Insight in 2020

With the first wave of COVID-19 infections in the United States, state and local governments, health care providers, and other decision makers needed data and tools to predict demand and direct resources. We responded by curating and sharing a list of data sources, analytic tools, policy options, and other information from publicly available resources. We also worked with the National Association of Health Data Organizations to share resources in a series of webinars. These resources included a COVID-19 Primer we created to help researchers, data scientists, and others who analyze health care claims or administrative data quickly join the effort to better understand, track, and contain COVID-19.

Recognizing the importance of accurate and timely information in making decisions during the pandemic, we created the 19-and-Me risk score calculator to help individuals estimate the risk the disease poses to them. The calculator has been featured in articles on Leapsmag and in Nature.

For Jackson County, North Carolina, we demonstrated that wastewater testing can provide early warning signs to alert local authorities to a potential rise in infections. This four-week pilot project received local media coverage from Blue Ridge Public Radio, Mountain Xpress, and Crossroads Chronicle, as well as the official publication of the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners, CountyQuarterly. It also motivated the Dogwood Health Trust to fund an expansion of COVID-19 wastewater testing in an additional rural county in western North Carolina through spring 2021.

Beyond the immediate needs of public health departments, communities across the country are looking for objective, science-based guidance on how and when to allow in-person interaction in spaces hard-hit by the pandemic, such as schools and long-term care facilities. We partnered with the Pennsylvania Department of Education to use agent-based modeling to predict the spread of COVID-19 in schools. This approach helped leaders in school districts across the state use the best available public health information to make difficult decisions about if, when, and how to resume in-person learning. More than 20 school districts and three charter schools in Pennsylvania, plus the state departments of education in Oregon and Mississippi, referenced our research in public documents related to reopening schools.

Mathematica’s mission to improve public well-being is inextricably linked to combating racism and its pernicious effects. Chief Executive Officer Paul Decker released a statement and video in June affirming that Black Lives Matter and joined a coalition of business leaders committed to meaningful change on diversity and inclusion. Race, equity, and discrimination became recurring themes on Mathematica’s podcast, On the Evidence. Guests discussed the harmful health, education, and economic effects of COVID-19 on Black, Indigenous, and Latinx Americans, and the connection between those effects and underlying social determinants of health.

The pandemic underscored the need for evidence and ideas that can help reshape our institutions and systems to be more equitable and just. We collaborated with the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Urban Institute, to highlight information from communities nationwide that adopted changes to safely and significantly reduce juvenile out-of-home placement. This initiative focused on youth of color, who are disproportionately represented in the juvenile justice system. We examined how the economic recession triggered by the pandemic affected unemployment and labor force participation rates among young adults and people with disabilities, two groups that historically have faced barriers to finding jobs.

In 2020, Mathematica took another important step in its journey, boosting its longstanding strength in public policy research and analysis with advanced and scalable technology. These resources improve the quality and depth of insight available in the vast amount of data we steward for our clients, and enable us to collect and examine that data more quickly. As new needs emerge, our growing bench of data scientists and programmers are building interactive maps, dashboards, and other tools that put community leaders in the driver’s seat. They are asking questions informed by lived experience and using insights to enact change. In partnership with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, we introduced the DQ Atlas. This online tool enables policymakers, researchers, and others who want to use timely administrative data to conduct insightful, methodologically sound analyses of Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

When COVID-19 became a global and national public health crisis, we used the same types of interactive web tools to visualize trends in school-closure policies across the country. In addition, we looked at how COVID-19 is shaping access to services and mobility restrictions, and its early impacts on food security and income in five African countries. We also pivoted to working virtually with our international development clients and partners around the world. We have used phone surveys, Skype, Zoom, and other platforms to ensure the seamless continuation of important research on what works to improve the financial and physical well-being of the world’s most vulnerable populations. As we applied new digital tools to research questions, we were guided by the company’s principles for prioritizing security, privacy, and ethical use of data.