
Jessica Sharac
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About Jessica
Jessica Sharac; PhD; MSc; MPH is a Research Scientist with the Geiger Gibson/RCHN Community Health Foundation Research Collaborative and the Department of Health Policy and Management at George Washington University. She conducts research on community health centers; women’s health and family planning; and behavioral health.
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Argues that coupling tools such as CMS’s Innovation Accelerator Program with up-front investments from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), state Medicaid agencies and health centers are ideally positioned to work together to improve the scope and quality of family planning services for health center patients at all points along the health care continuum, beginning with preconception care and continuing throughout the childbearing cycle.
Uses data from a nationwide survey to examine the early outreach and enrollment efforts of 606 community health centers across the United States. In states with restrictive policies toward the Affordable Care Act implementation (defined as both opting out of the Medicaid adult expansion and adopting Navigator laws), health centers are confronting significantly greater outreach and enrollment challenges compared to health centers in states that have fully implemented the law through Medicaid expansion and without outreach and enrollment restrictions.
Provides a current snapshot of health centers and discusses recent developments that can be expected to have a significant impact on health center growth in the coming years.
Provides an initial assessment of the implications for low-income women of Texas’ “affiliation regulation,” which would bar Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) clinics from participating in the Texas Women’s Health Program (WHP). Argues that the affiliation rule may jeopardize family planning, cancer screening, and preventive health care for approximately 52,000 women currently served by PPFA clinics under the WHP.