Teenage pregnancy can have a profound impact on a teen’s life, yet pregnant and parenting teens are often overlooked and stigmatized. Teen mothers disproportionately have childhoods that include adverse events and experiences such as family instability, chronic stress and social…

Our objectives were to 1) quantify the frequency of wheezing episodes and asthma diagnosis in young children in a large pediatric primary care network and 2) assess the variability in practice-level asthma diagnosis, accounting for common asthma risk factors and comorbidities. We…

Poor mental health remains a significant source of morbidity and mortality in the Bhutanese refugee community. Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) is a promising intervention that has been used in other immigrant communities to prepare individuals to recognize and respond to mental health…

As part of the PA Family Support Needs Assessment, PolicyLab assessed county-level data from eight related indicators—outlined in this brief—of substance use, the impacts of opioid use in pregnancy, and risks for people in the postpartum period to offer broad insight into opportunities…

We recently transitioned from in-person delivery of a brief behavioral parent intervention to telepsychology delivery to meet families' needs during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this topical review, we describe how we used treatment fidelity as a guiding principle to orient adaptations…

OBJECTIVES: A relatively small proportion of children with asthma account for an outsized proportion of health care use. Our goal was to use quality improvement methodology to reduce repeat emergency department (ED) and inpatient care for patients with frequent asthma-related…

Children presenting with musculoskeletal pain to pediatric rheumatology clinics are very heterogeneous and on a continuum from those with localized pain to total body pain. Many report intermittent, rather than constant, pain. We examined clinical and psychological characteristics of…

Between January 2019 and October 2020, PolicyLab collaborated with the Pennsylvania Office of Child Development and Early Learning to complete the 2020 Family Support Needs Assessment, which describes a wide range of social, environmental, and health factors impacting the well-being of…

In collaboration with the Pennsylvania Office of Child Development and Early Learning (OCDEL), PolicyLab conducted a county-level needs assessment of the health of children, mothers, and families, as well as the social and environmental circumstances of families and communities across…

Ninety percent of smokers start as teens and consequently, youth are one of the tobacco industry’s primary targets. Fortunately, over the last several years, there has been a dramatic decline in youth cigarette use, but those gains have been challenged by the introduction of e…