Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Measuring The Impact Of The Affordable Care Act Medicaid Expansion On Access To Primary Care Using An Interrupted Time Series Approach, Elizabeth A. Brown, Brandi M. White, Walter J. Jones, Mulugeta Gebregziabher, Kit N. Simpson

Health and Clinical Sciences Faculty Publications

BACKGROUND: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, commonly referred to as the Affordable Care Act (ACA), was created to increase access to primary care, improve quality of care, and decrease healthcare costs. A key provision in the law that mandated expansion of state Medicaid programme changed when states were given the option to voluntarily expand Medicaid. Our study sought to measure the impact of ACA Medicaid expansion on preventable hospitalization (PH) rates, a measure of access to primary care.

METHODS: We performed an interrupted time series analysis of quarterly hospitalization rates across eight states from 2012 to …

Introduction To Special Topic: Rural Education Finance And Policy, Christiana Stoddard, Eugenia F. Toma

Public Policy and Administration Faculty Publications

This special topic takes stock of the current state of rural education finance and policy research. Taken together the articles in this special topic highlight a major point. Rural districts and schools not only differ from those in urban areas but also differ from one another. This is perhaps not surprising given the heterogeneity of school size, community size, demographics, and the degree of rurality of schools across the United States. The articles pose a challenge for policymakers. Policies that serve one state or one rural community may not be relevant or helpful to another. Policy solutions must recognize the …

Under Whose Roof? Understanding The Living Arrangements Of Children In Doubled-Up Households, Hope Harvey, Rachel Dunifon, Natasha Pilkauskas

Public Policy and Administration Faculty Publications

A growing literature in family demography examines children's residence in doubled-up (shared) households with extended family members and nonkin. This research has largely overlooked the role of doubling up as a housing strategy, with “hosts” (householders) providing housing support for “guests” living in their home. Yet, understanding children's experiences in doubled-up households requires attention to host/guest status. Using the American Community Survey and Survey of Income and Program Participation, we identify the prevalence of children doubling up as hosts and guests in different household compositions (multigenerational, extended family, nonkin), show how this varies by demographic characteristics, and examine children's patterns …

The Fiscal Impact Of Covid-19: A Study Of Five States, Jacob Jansen

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken its toll on states’ coffers due to declining revenues and in response state budget authorities have taken action to adjust budgets in order to maintain proper financial balance. At the end of fiscal year 2020 on June 30, 2020, budget authorities in 46 states likely found themselves straining to make sure their state’s bottom line was not grossly negative. That strain has since continued into fiscal year 2021, which started the day after. As revenues appear to be on the rise again and the financial hardships lessened, an evaluation of the responses to the pandemic’s …

Mandated Reporting And Its Effects On The Rate Of Reported And Substantiated Child Abuse, Taylor Johnston

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

State-level data on the rate of reported abuse per 1,000 children, as published in the Children’s Bureau’s Annual Child Maltreatment Report, has been used as a metric to rank and compare states’ performance in child welfare. States wish to understand what the rate of reported abuse per 1,000 children means, what state-specific policies and issues can affect this number, and how to interpret the data to make effective policy decisions. This paper studies the effects of having mandated reporting laws that require all citizens to report reasonable suspicion of abuse to Child Protective Services on a state’s rate of reported …

Developing Best Practices For Successful Public-Private Partnerships, Farishta Mccourt

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Many states and cities find themselves facing several serious long‐term public infrastructure challenges due to rising maintenance costs. Infrastructure funding gaps arose from an inefficient approach to public infrastructure development and operation. States and local governments were faced with unfunded pension obligations and as a solution, they diverted tax revenues away from the maintenance and growth of infrastructure. The 2008 economic recession occurred and compounded these problems. Budget studies indicated that states needed new policies and strategies to slow down the pace of spending on infrastructure maintenance as the recession started to subside, further exacerbating the infrastructure funding gap.1 This …

Analysis Of Tax Increment Financing (Tif) Usage And State Requirements, Joseph Black

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Tax Increment Financing(TIF)is one of the most popular economic development tools in use, as well as one of the few economic development tools available to municipal governments. Although it was slow to be adopted by many states, currently every state, as well as the District of Colombia, has active TIF districts to back over $35 billion in bonds across the country. Despite its popularity, there is no consensus on the ability of TIF to create a planned and measurable outcome. Because of this ambiguity, TIF usage is clustered across the country as state legislatures have put in varying requirements to …

Parents’ Awareness And Perspective Of School Choice Scales: Development, Revision, And Validation Using The Rasch Model, Katherine Leung Robershaw

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

Parents want the best for their children. But for those who also believe in equal educational opportunity, they struggle with the moral dilemmas raised by school choice. To investigate where parents stand in this dilemma, this study is devoted to the creation of the Parents’ Awareness and Perspective of School Choice (PAPSC) scales, a survey instrument capturing a continuum of conversations surrounding parental school choice, from parents’ awareness of school choice policies or programs to debates surrounding parental freedom of school choice. This study also emphasized the use of well-developed, validated survey tools in educational policy and school choice …

Strategic Educational Leadership Within The Policy-Making Arena: The Promulgation, Passage, And Practice Of Tennessee's High Performing School Districts Flexibility Act Of 2013, Robert Lawrence Hullett Jr.

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

In 2010, Tennessee’s 106th General Assembly passed the First to the Top Act (2010), a companion legislation for the federal Race to the Top Act (2009) program launched by the Obama Administration. A provision of this state law required that half of teacher and principal evaluations be based upon student achievement, which included a component of required continuous academic growth. For school districts whose students scored at the highest academic performance levels, the continuous growth component would negatively impact their teachers’ and principals’ annual evaluations. In 2012, the Williamson County Schools (WCS) superintendent requested mitigation for relieve from the Tennessee …

Examining The Impact Of Performance-Based Funding Equity Premiums On Public Historically Black Colleges And Universities, Adam Blevins

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Performance-based funding (PBF) policies in the United States have grown both in complexity and popularity over the last two decades. While states seek to utilize these models to enforce accountability at institutions of postsecondary education, the rise of such funding policies has not come without scrutiny. Researchers have found evidence of adverse consequences resulting from these policies, many of which disproportionately impact underrepresented groups of students, smaller schools, and minority-serving institutions (MSIs) such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). While opponents of the policies have, in some cases, called for the abandonment of PBF models altogether, proponents have sought …

The Effects Of Npo’S Revenue Diversification On Financial Vulnerability, Junoh Jeon

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

This capstone project investigates whether revenue diversification leads to reduce financial vulnerability of nonprofit organizations. The findings of this study suggest that organizations with more diversified revenue portfolios have lower levels of financial vulnerability over time, which means that revenue diversification is a reasonable strategy for organizational stability. This study has also examined the effects of relying on specific restricted and non-restricted revenue sources on financial vulnerabilities of organizations. Although hypothesis was that the nonprofit organizations relying on restricted with instable revenue sources would have a relatively higher financial vulnerability compared to other organizations, the findings suggest different results. The …

Child Welfare Spending And Rates Of Adverse Childhood Experiences, Wesley Scott

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

State and federal child welfare represents a major spending category in budgets across the United States. While new and revised legislation is proposed and enacted, sweeping reforms of the child welfare system is uncommon. Changes to child welfare are implemented through budget line items, whether that comes from Congressional funding or state initiatives. Increased funding allows for more direct contact and interaction with children, prompting safer environments and potentially stronger academic and social-emotional outcomes for youth. This paper looks at the relationship between the per capita funding of child welfare services per state and the rate of adverse childhood experiences …

Study On The Effectiveness Of Childbirth Grant Policy In Korea, Myung Goo Lee

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

South Korea was once a typical high birth country. However, Korea is facing serious low birth rates recently as the total fertility rate is 0.98, which means that the Korean couple has less than one child on average. The rapid demographic change due to low fertility causes many negative effects such as economic vitality and welfare burden. Thus, the Korean governments have introduced various policies to overcome the low birth rate, and one of these is the childbirth grant policy: governments provide a certain amount of cash when a family within its jurisdiction gives birth. However, the world's lowest fertility …

Catalyzing Change In Higher Education: Social Capital And Network Leadership In The Competency-Based Education Network, Bruce William Haupt Jr.

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

Collaborative inter-organizational networks can be effective at catalyzing and supporting the generation and diffusion of new models and practices. With shared purpose, structure, and resources, network organizations can facilitate knowledge exchange and the growth of inter-organizational relationships. In this study, I sought to better understand how network organizations influence social capital and the spread of innovative practices. Of particular interest were the roles of national network and sub-national network organizations (sub-networks), and the interactive learning processes of network newcomers. I focused on the diverse array of colleges and universities involved in the Competency-Based Education Network (C-BEN), and their efforts to …

Collaborative Competition In Homeless Services: Three Essays On Federal-Local Partnerships, Andrew Alfred Sullivan

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

The United States’ federal government funds homeless services provided at the local level through the McKinney-Vento Act, encouraging collaboration among providers. This dissertation studies three aspects of homelessness: merging of local planning bodies, identification of homeless students, and the relationship between experiencing homelessness in high school and long-term educational outcomes.

The first chapter studies the effect of merging Continuums of Care (CoCs), local planning bodies for homeless services. While merging brings organizations into the same network and could make use of economies of scale, it brings service provision to a less-local level, taking away responsiveness to the community and inter-jurisdictional …

The Oil Curse Validated: Evidence From Eurasia And Latin America, Barrak Algharabali, J. S. Butler, Stacy Closson

Public Policy and Administration Faculty Publications

Many studies have found a negative relationship between oil abundance and democracy. However, recent studies have tried to upend this correlation by employing time-series techniques or finding a conditionality on other factors. This study contributes to the literature by employing an Arellano Bond model that corrects for fixed effects and adopts new variables from recent empirical studies. Comparing Eurasia and Latin America from the 1960s to 2010, we find that the theory of a negative relationship between an abundance of natural resources and democracy remains valid.

Funding For Postsecondary Education Impacts Kentucky’S Undergraduate Enrollment Trends, Michaela Mineer

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

In the Commonwealth of Kentucky, public universities have consistently seen their state funding decrease over the past several years. Using data from the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education and Kentucky Office of State Budget Director, this paper analyzes the relationship among postsecondary education state and federal funding and full-time undergraduate student enrollment in Kentucky’s 4-year public universities and the Kentucky Community and Technical College System. According to the Courier Journal, in 2019 “Kentucky was 1 of only 5 states to cut money for higher education” (Watkins). With the fluctuation of higher education funding in Kentucky, the concern is how universities …

The Evaluation Of The Role Of Research Administrators In The Biomedical Research Grant Lifecycle And How Public Universities’ Policies Are Designed To Protect Funding, Megan Eder

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

There was a time in the not-so-distant past, where a simple infection had the opportunity to send an individual to an early grave. With advancements in biomedical research, medical professionals can treat simple infections as well as more complicated illnesses. Medical research has come a long way, but there is still a need for research in order to find, treat, and advance cures for illness and disease. Last year, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the entire world was waiting for researchers to create a vaccine to help slow the spread and get the world back to operating at a normal capacity. …

Bio-Spatial Policing In Theory And Practice: Examining Impacts And Resistance Through Mobilities And Children's Everyday Life, Emily Kaufman

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

Despite decades of reforms and technological innovations, increasing evidence shows that state securitization disproportionately harms already racially, spatially, and socio-economically marginalized communities. My research investigates uneven impacts of state securitization, from punitive welfare programs to school surveillance to policing. Across sites, I focus on scales, voices and the everyday lived experiences often left out of scholarly discourse and sensational media. In the current climate of growing awareness and scholarship on police violence, my dissertation addresses three less-studied areas: 1) the interplay between racial, gendered, spatial, and technified police practices; 2) how these practices impact the everyday lives of those racially …

The Impact Of Corporate Tax On Investment In South Korea, Hyoungchul Lee

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

The President of the Republic of Korea, Moon Jae-in reformed corporate tax, which is the new establishment of the highest bracket affecting on only companies with 300 billion won or more of sales. However, it caused a great controversy in Korea. The conservative argues that lowering corporate tax rate will improve corporate competitiveness while the progressive says that corporate taxes are neutral in corporate investment decisions.

According to an economic model, the amount of an entity's investment is determined by costs and returns when an additional unit of capital is used. Assuming taxes are raised with depreciation and deductions, it …

Disparities In Race, Gender, And Disability Status In Kentucky’S Alternative School Population, Austin Sprinkles

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

A 2018 report by the Government Accountability Office found that certain groups of students, namely, Black male and female students, Hispanic male and female students and male students with disabilities were overrepresented in Alternative Schools nationwide. Using data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) 2017-18 survey, this project aimed to examine Alternative Schools in Kentucky to understand whether trends that existed at the national level also exist in Kentucky. Additionally, this study examined disproportionality in four subtypes of alternative schools across Kentucky: Academic Alternative, Disciplinary Alternative, Both (Academic & Disciplinary), and Juvenile Justice Facilities. Last, …

Health Impact Of Mountaintop Removal And Federal Air Quality-Related Policies: A Study On Respiratory Disease And Lung Cancer Mortality Rates In Ky, Hannah Harrison

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Coal mining has been a major industry in Central Appalachia for over a century, and in the 1970s, it went through a major transition. In an effort to access coal seams previously inaccessible to traditional underground mining methods, coal companies began to adopt a new extraction method known as mountaintop removal (MTR). This new approach to surface mining involved deforesting a mountaintop and then removing the remaining rock and vegetation that is sitting atop a coal seam via explosives and heaving machinery. Compared to underground mining, MTR released more air pollution than underground mining in the form of particulate matter …

Financial Trends In Kentucky’S Full Service Jails Fy07 To Fy19, Kayla Carter

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Research on jail finances in the United States, in general, and Kentucky, specifically, has been lacking. This capstone describes trends in jail finances in Kentucky. It also examines the legal requirement to house certain state inmates in county jails and the financial burden of this requirement on counties. Uniform Financial Information Reports (UFIRs) data from 58 counties in Kentucky was used to descriptively analyze financial trends in full service jails from fiscal years 2007 to 2019. This data was combined with Kentucky Department of Corrections jail population data from fiscal years 2012 to 2019 to compare financial trends with the …

Effects Of Covid-19 On Sports Program Offerings At Ncaa Division I Institutions, Jason Schlafer

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

COVID-19 on Sports Program Offerings at NCAA Division I Institutions 2 Executive Summary In the past 40 years, the cost of operating a competitive college athletics department that competes for an institution within a Power Five conference the highest level of intercollegiate competition- has risen drastically. Concurrently, opportunities to compete at the highest level have expanded, especially for women who now outnumber men in Division I athletics competition. As COVID-19 constrained revenue, five institutions from Power Five conferences have discontinued 23 sports programs to date. This paper addresses how decision makers determine which sports programs to eliminate and offers recommendations …

The Effect Of Veteran Status On Economic Reintegration, Amanda Buck

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Veteran unemployment rates are often understated in reports due to the generalization of the individuals that make up the veteran population. While veterans overall suffer a larger penalty than non-veterans in the civilian labor market, different demographics of veterans deal with diverse consequences of service. Specifically looking at Gulf War Era-II veterans compared with their similarly aged civilian peers, two linear regressions are used with main effects and differential effects to show the different probabilities of unemployment for distinct groups. Veterans’ probability of unemployment is 0.66 percent higher than their non-veteran peers. However, I find that Black veterans have a …

Keep Lexington Beautiful Strategic Plan, Katherine Losekamp

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

As an affiliate of Keep America Beautiful, Keep Lexington Beautiful (KLB) encourages residents of Fayette County to engage in environmentally sustainable practices (Keep Lexington Beautiful, 2020). KLB was formerly a city commission of Lexington- Fayette Urban County Government (LFUCG) but in the winter of 2020 to 2021 broke off to form their own independent non-profit by the same name. During this process, they maintained about half of their original board members and hope in the future to expand their board to get more people from different perspectives involved. This project utilizes a short-term strategic plan to guide KLB through this …

Special Taxing Districts: An Analysis Of States’ Oversight & Accountability Practices And How Kentucky Could Adopt Best Practices For More Accountability, Kelly Dockter

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Special districts are forms of government that were initially developed from the need to provide specialized services to a growing population with limited tax abilities. Local governments were faced with increasing populations and increasing needs such as health and human services, conservation, sanitation and water, and fire protection to name a few. With the states’ limitations on the tax rate changes, local governments were finding it increasingly difficult to meet the needs of the taxpayers. In many states, legislators recognized this issue and allowed single purpose government-like entities to be created and if they qualified, gave them taxing power. Despite …

Convenience Voting Methods And Effects On Voter Turnout: 2004-2018, Robert Fenton

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

This project seeks to examine the potential effects on voter turnout of changes in the laws and policies governing convenience voting methods: the different ways for citizens to cast a ballot anywhere or anytime besides an official polling location on Election Day itself. Specifically, convenience voting methods include absentee voting, early voting, and vote-by-mail, often coming with restrictions such as requiring a valid excuse in order to make use of them. As the US Constitution and relevant federal laws leave election administration almost entirely to the individual states, there is often significant variation in the availability of convenience voting methods …

The State Of Woodford County’S Assistance Network, Katherine Connair

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

This study seeks to determine what the overall picture of assistance network serving the Woodford County region is. The goal was to determine if there are any observable gaps in the network and to have a clear understanding of what the assistance network is. Gaps were identified by studying the existing network, surveying network members, and examining publicly available resources. A Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis was conducted to analysis the whole network. Assistance for this study refers to programs/organizations that provide cash or in-kind benefits/services to people (U.S. Census Bureau). The assistance network is all of the …

Pharmacy Student Opinions Related To Question, Persuade, And Refer (Qpr) Suicide Prevention Training, Alexandra Sutphin

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Suicide is one of the leading causes of death in the United States (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2017). The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has increased concerns related to suicide, with additional attention placed on the potential long-term negative impact of COVID-19 on mental health. Pharmacists are healthcare providers who are readily accessible and underutilized in suicide prevention efforts. This study uses survey methodology and comparative analyses to develop recommendations for the timing and administration of Question, Persuade, and Refer (QPR) suicide prevention training in the Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) curriculum at the University of Kentucky College …