Professor Nadereh Pourat
December 10, 2020
Nadereh Pourat, associate director at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and professor of health policy and management at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, and Emmeline Chuang, associate professor at the UC Berkeley School of Social Welfare, have received a $200,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The researchers will explore how California counties responded to COVID-19 under the Whole Person Care Medicaid Pilot Program.
The grant will expand on efforts to evaluate Whole Person Care, or WPC, a Medicaid program launched in 2016 by the California Department of Health Care Services, which aims to provide coordinated health care and social services for patients with complex needs, such as those who are homeless, have mental health and chronic conditions, or have been recently incarcerated. Researchers will look at whether WPC improved health outcomes and service delivery for enrolled patients. The findings will be used to inform future efforts by service providers and policymakers to improve Medicaid beneficiaries’ quality of care and health outcomes.