Promoting Evidence-Based Public Policies

By: AIF Staff

Earlier this week, the House Committee on Ways and Means advanced legislation to reauthorize the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visitation (MIECHV) program   which supports expectant mothers and parents improve their lives and the lives of their young children through one-on-one home visits and intensive support.

The Committee honored the late Rep. Jackie Walorski, a long-time champion of the program, naming the legislation in her honor. As ranking Republican Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas noted during the Committee’s consideration of the bill:

“MIECHV is a critical program that supports vulnerable families and aims to improve the health of mothers and babies through pregnancy into the early years of a child’s life. It is a bipartisan bill and it reflects many of our Republican priorities, including increasing transparency about outcomes for families and targeting dollars to the neediest communities.

This bill would gradually increase funding from $400 million a year to $800 million a year over a five-year period, and introduce a state match as a way to expand overall service capacity across the country. The principle is simple: The federal government will invest where the states see value in investing.

It also ensures that new matching funds are allocated to states based on the number of children under five living below poverty – so funding goes where the greatest need exists.

The bill increases transparency by creating a state-by-state outcomes dashboard so we can see how interventions are impacting families, and maintains the current focus on high evidence standards.

Unlike many of our government programs, MIECHV is evidence-based – so we know the real impact on families and children and are able to direct funding toward what works.

The program has demonstrated success in supporting expecting families to increase healthy behaviors by coaching parents on child nutrition and development and mitigating risk factors to prevent child abuse and neglect.”

American Idea Foundation President Paul Ryan has long been an ardent supporter of the MIECHV program, which has been re-authorized under both Republican and Democratic Administrations.

The Ways and Means-passed legislation would build on the program’s strong base of evidence by increasing funding by $100 million and increasing the allocations for each state and territory. Given MIECHV has historically been funded by both federal and state governments, this reauthorization would increase the matching formula so for every $1 in state investments, the federal government would contribute $3.

It also would expand the transparency of data and evidence collected from the MIECHV program by adding additional reporting requirements and outcomes-based dashboards, which will help Congress track the impact of interventions over time. Even in a post COVID-19 environment, the legislation ensures that in-person, home visitations are required as part of the program which adds an important layer of accountability.

As Speaker Ryan stated during a visit to a Nurse-Family Partnership in South Carolina in 2021, MIECHV is changing lives and helping mothers, children, and communities across the country. It is an evidence-based success story  and the Ways and Means Committee should be commended for advancing this reauthorization which will help expand opportunities and fight poverty in a data-driven way.

By: AIF Staff

This week, President Biden signed into law the CHIPS & Science Act of 2022. The legislation, which was primarily focused on making the United States more competitive with China, also included an important provision establishing a National Secure Data Service (NSDS) demonstration project at the National Science Foundation.

This may seem like a small accomplishment relative to the larger aims of the bill, but it’s an impactful one. Congress’ willingness to advance a National Secure Data Service demonstration project is a positive development for those who believe in evidence-based public policy-making and it is the product of years of hard work.

In 2015-2016, Speaker Ryan was a lead sponsor of legislation that created a bipartisan Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking. This Commission, put simply, was tasked by Congress to provide recommendations on how the federal government could secure, collect, and utilize data to construct effective public policies. 

One of their recommendations was to create a National Secure Data Service. In their 2017 report, the Commission succinctly described why this National Secure Data Service was necessary, saying in part:

 “Better access to these data holds the potential for substantial gains for society. The Commission’s recommendations recognize that the country’s laws and practices are not currently optimized to support the use of data for evidence building, nor in a manner that best protects privacy. To correct these problems, the Commission makes the following recommendations….

“Establish a National Secure Data Service to facilitate access to data for evidence building while ensuring privacy and transparency in how those data are used. As a state-of-the-art resource for improving government’s capacity to use the data it already collects, the National Secure Data Service will be able to temporarily link existing data and provide secure access to those data for exclusively statistical purposes in connection with approved projects.”

Going to great lengths to achieve a balance between data security and accessibility, the Commission also specified that the NSDS had to have specific privacy protections so data was protected.

Following the Commission’s recommendations, Congressman Don Beyer of Virginia introduced stand-alone legislation called National Secure Data Service Act in 2021. The bill would:

“Allow access to government data by qualified researchers for approved purposes, ensuring privacy and transparency for the data service’s activities. Beyer’s bill would create a NSDS demonstration project housed within the National Science Foundation to test and refine approaches that would inform the implementation of a government-wide data linkage and access infrastructure, with the goal of scaling up the project in the future.”

This language from Rep. Beyer’s bill was largely incorporated into the CHIPS & Science Act of 2022. The Data Coalition, one of the leading advocates for the National Secure Data Service, described the multi-year accomplishment this way:

“The NSDS will encourage government and research partners to organize, analyze, and use information in support of evidence-informed decision-making to improve society…. The NSDS can help government officials and researchers meet the demand from decision-makers for useful, high-quality evidence that is timely, relevant, reliable, and detailed enough to inform policy while protecting the privacy of individuals and businesses.”

In the context of an enormous bill focused on semiconductors and competition with China, the creation of a demonstration project for the NSDS may seem insignificant. In fact, it is a meaningful milestone and an instructive reminder for those who want to see greater adoption of evidence-based public policies at the federal level. 

The creation of the NSDS demonstration project shows that getting the government to prioritize evidence-based policy-making will take time. But the time and effort are well worth it because the advancement of the NSDS will ultimately lead to better data collection and data sharing practices by the government. This, in turn, will lead to more evidenced-based public policies and those policies have the ability to help more and more Americans in profound ways. In short, the National Secure Data Service was well worth fighting for.