Public Health
Explore how public health strategies address aging-related challenges and create healthier communities for all generations.
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Inside the West Health City Checkup
Not one of the 789 cities graded by the West Health City Checkup earned an A. Rockville, Maryland, ranked first in the country, earns the single highest grade anyone achieved: a B+. Its Safety & Security domain, on its own, sits at only the 72nd percentile.1 Strong, not flawless, and that's true of the best report card in America.That's not a flaw in the measurement. It's the finding, and that’s w...
Reform Check: Are Rebate Aggregators Changing How PBMs Do Business?
Over the last decade, pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) have become highly consolidated and vertically integrated, playing a central role in negotiating drug rebates on behalf of health plans. In recent years, however, PBMs have increasingly shifted this function to newly created entities known as rebate aggregators. Launched by the three largest PBMs, these aggregators now negotiate billions of do...
2025 Healthcare in America Report
Healthcare is becoming increasingly unaffordable for millions of Americans. The 2025 West Health-Gallup Healthcare Affordability Index reveals a troubling new high: 35% of U.S. adults—an estimated 91 million people—say they could not access quality care if they needed it today. The gap is especially wide among Black, Hispanic, and lower-income Americans, with affordability worsening year over year...
The Gold Standard in Geriatric Emergency Department Care
In response to the growing number of older adults utilizing emergency department (ED) services, UC San Diego Health established the first Geriatric Emergency Department (GED) in California. This initiative, supported by a partnership with West Health, led to the creation of the Gary and Mary West Senior Emergency Care Unit (SECU), a dedicated space within the ED for geriatric care. The SECU has se...
Number of Accredited Geriatric Emergency Departments Surpasses 500, Elevating Care for Older Adults
In 2018, the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) established the Geriatric Emergency Department Accreditation Program in response to growing evidence that emergency departments needed to do more specifically for older adults and not take a one-size-fits-all approach to care.Six years later, more than 500 geriatric emergency departments (GED) have earned accreditation spreading across 2...
2024 Healthcare in America Report
All baby boomers will be 65 or older by 2030. Is America ready?In 2030, the last of the baby boomers will turn 65. By this time, adults aged 65 and older will make up about 20% of the U.S. population. By 2035, the U.S. Census Bureau projects that older adults will outnumber children under 18 for the first time ever, marking one of the most significant demographic shifts in history. Given this neve...
Trends in HIV Preexposure Prophylaxis Utilization and Spending Among Individuals with Commercial Insurance
AbstractIn a cross-sectional analysis of HIV preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) utilization by commercially insured patients from 2019 to 2021, most prescriptions were for branded formulations of PrEP despite the availability of a generic version. Accounting for the modest relative clinical benefit of branded TAF/FTC (tenofovir alafenamide fumarate/emtricitabine) PrEP over generic TDF/FTC (tenofovir d...
New York Just Committed to a Master Plan for Aging
*Note that Multisector Plan for Aging is the term used across the nation; California’s plan is called the Master Plan for Aging.In 2022, New York became the latest state to launch a Master Plan for Aging (MPA)—a multisector, comprehensive roadmap to create the conditions for all people to thrive as they age. When Gov. Kathy Hochul committed to an executive order for the Master Plan for Aging in he...
Supporting Local Multisector Plans for Aging in Rural Communities
When people think of California, they often imagine it is primarily suburban and urban, picturing Los Angeles and San Francisco. However, more than one in eight Californians ages 65 and older lives in a rural or frontier (fewer than 6 people per square mile) Census code. That’s 804,000 adults—more than the entire populations of Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska or North Dakota.Rural communities across the ...
Join the Movement: Every State Should Have a Multisector Plan for Aging
ASA is partnering with West Health, The SCAN Foundation and The John A. Hartford Foundation on a series of posts, virtual and On Aging programming to foster Multisector Plans for Aging across the country. This is the first in the blog post series.To age is to live. But living well into our later years of life is not a guarantee. To do that, you need a plan.By 2040, more than one in five people in ...