RAND Corporation

About: RAND Corporation is a nonprofit organization based out in Santa Monica, California, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Health care. The organization has 9602 authors who have published 18570 publications receiving 744658 citations.

Systematic Review of the Impact of Worksite Wellness Programs

Abstract: Objectives To analyze the impact of worksite wellness programs on health and financial outcomes, and the effect of incentives on participation. Methods Sources were PubMed, CINAHL and EconLit, Embase, Web of Science, and Cochrane for 2000-2011. We examined articles with comparison groups that assessed health-related behaviors, physiologic markers, healthcare cost, and absenteeism. Data on intervention, outcome, size, industry, research design, and incentive use were extracted. Results A total of 33 studies evaluated 63 outcomes. Positive effects were found for threefourths of observational designs compared with half of outcomes in randomized controlled trials. A total of 8 of 13 studies found improvements in physical activity, 6 of 12 in diet, 6 of 12 in body mass index/weight, and 3 of 4 in mental health. A total of 6 of 7 studies on tobacco and 2 of 3 on alcohol use found significant reductions. All 4 studies on absenteeism and 7 of 8 on healthcare costs estimated significant decreases. Only 2 of 23 studies evaluated the impact of incentives and found positive health outcomes and decreased costs. Conclusions The studies yielded mixed results regarding impact of wellness programs on healthrelated behaviors, substance use, physiologic markers, and cost, while the evidence for effects on absenteeism and mental health is insufficient. The validity of those findings is reduced by the lack of rigorous evaluation designs. Further, the body of publications is in stark contrast to the widespread use of such programs, and research on the effect of incentives is lacking.

Changes in sickness at admission following the introduction of the prospective payment system.

Abstract: We developed disease-specific measures of sickness at admission based on medical record data to study mortality of Medicare patients with one of five conditions (congestive heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, cerebrovascular accident, pneumonia, and hip fracture). We collected an average of 73 sickness variables per disease, but our final sickness-at-admission scales use, on average, 19 variables. These scales are publicly available, and explain 25% of the variance in 30-day postadmission mortality for patients with acute myocardial infarction, pneumonia, or cerebrovascular accident. Sickness at admission increased following the introduction of the prospective payment system (PPS). For our five diseases combined, the 30-day mortality to be expected because of sickness at admission was 1.0% higher in the 1985-1986 period than in the 1981-1982 period (16.4% vs 15.4%), and the expected 180-day mortality was 1.6% higher (30.1% vs 28.5%). Studies of the effects of PPS on mortality must take this increase in sickness at admission into account. (JAMA. 1990;264:1962-1968)

Obesity and the built environment: changes in environmental cues cause energy imbalances

Abstract: The past 30 years have seen dramatic changes in the food and physical activity environments, both of which contribute to the changes in human behavior that could explain obesity. This paper reviews documented changes in the food environment, changes in the physical activity environment and the mechanisms through which people respond to these environments, often without conscious awareness or control. The most important environmental changes have been increases in food accessibility, food salience and decreases in the cost of food. The increases in food marketing and advertising create food cues that artificially stimulate people to feel hungry. The existence of a metabolic pathway that allows excess energy to be stored as fat suggests that people were designed to overeat. Many internal mechanisms favor neurophysiologic responses to food cues that result in overconsumption. External cues, such as food abundance, food variety and food novelty, cause people to override internal signals of satiety. Other factors, such as conditioning and priming, tie food to other desirable outcomes, and thus increase the frequency that hunger is stimulated by environmental cues. People's natural response to the environmental cues are colored by framing, and judgments are flawed and biased depending on how information is presented. People lack insight into how the food environment affects them, and subsequently are unable to change the factors that are responsible for excessive energy consumption. Understanding the causal pathway for overconsumption will be necessary to interrupt the mechanisms that lead to obesity.

Using Pooled Kappa to Summarize Interrater Agreement across Many Items

Abstract: We propose the pooled estimator of kappa, an efficient estimator when summarizing the interrater agreement for qualitative data with many items but few subjects. We evaluate this estimator through a simulation of proposed and alternative (average kappa) estimators and subsequently apply our method to calculate pooled and average kappas over 2,176 rated items from six semistructured interviews with sponsors of the CAHPS. The proposed pooled kappa estimator efficiently summarizes interrater agreement by domain. It is more widely applicable and makes better use of scarce subjects than simply averaging item-level kappas.