The Policy Core aims to promote research that informs HIV/AIDS policy making with relevant dat and will develop and disseminate unbiased information about how public and private policies affect services received and outcomes for persons with HIV. In the past, HIV/AIDS policies have not been grounded in scientific evidence. Thus, this Core will elucidate links between public policies and health outcomes and disseminate its findings to policy makers. For example, the differential impact of public policies (such as Medicaid) and of private policies (such as managed care) on different communalities (defined by ethnicity or gender or sexual orientation) may be a focus of this Core. We will assist our community partners in responding to policy makers' evolving needs for information about the effectiveness of their programs in terms of behavior, health outcomes, and costs. A multi-disciplinary group of economists, policy analysts, psychologists, and methodologists will work with out community partners to address emerging policy issues to assist researchers in securing funding examining the effects of existing policies on person's living with HIV/AIDS, and to analyze proposed HIV/AIDS policies. The addition of a Policy Core to our Center is a natural outgrowth of our ongoing activities promoting research to inform policy making, assisting collaborators and government entities in implementing evidence-based planning relevant to HIV identification, prevention and treatment services. The proposed policy-related activities are generally not funded by traditional research funding sources and, therefore, this core must emphasize developing new information. Because site specific interventions or revaluations collecting primary data generally do not allow for examination of different policy environments, this Core will apply new econometric methodology to secondary data to isolate the effects of public policies relevant to HIV. This Core will also promote policy-related research by tracking and disseminating HIV relevant legislative developments to investigators and by training researchers and community collaborators in methods for collecting and analyzing data that address specific public policy concerns.
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