The Nicholson Foundation

The Nicholson Foundation Honored With Governor's Proclamation For Its Work Over 20 Years In NJ

BruceT — Wed, 03 Nov 2021 16:27:20 +0000

The Nicholson Foundation Honored With Governor's Proclamation for its Work In NJ

11.3.2021

News

New Jersey Governor Philip D. Murphy issued a proclamation recognizing The Nicholson Foundation's efforts over its 20-year history on behalf of the vulnerable populations of the state.

New Jersey Governor Philip D. Murphy issued the following proclamation in late 2021, recognizing The Nicholson Foundation for the work it did over two decades to improve the health and well-being of vulnerable populations in the state.

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Nicholson Foundation Report Outlines How Telehealth Can Improve Healthcare Delivery in NJ

BruceT — Tue, 14 Sep 2021 19:01:11 +0000

Nicholson Foundation Report Outlines How Telehealth Can Improve Healthcare Delivery in New Jersey

9.16.2021

Resources

A report from The Nicholson Foundation outlines how lessons learned from the accelerated application of telehealth in New Jersey during the COVID-19 pandemic can help the state become a national leader in its ongoing use to improve healthcare delivery.

The authors of Moving Telehealth Forward in New Jersey say achieving that goal will require changes that include: eliminating the digital divide; establishing a private-public entity to advocate for statewide adoption of pertinent telehealth laws; educating healthcare providers working with vulnerable populations about privacy and confidentiality laws that apply to telehealth; and adequately reimbursing providers for telehealth services that replace or complement in-person visits.

A collaboration between Knight Consulting, LLC and The Nicholson Foundation, the report notes that telehealth use had been building for decades. However, its use in the United States had been mostly seen in rural areas until the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated a safer alternative to in-person visits to doctors and other healthcare providers. During the pandemic, telehealth use increased exponentially among all economic groups, but its distribution was uneven: Populations with limited access to healthcare services before the pandemic, also benefited less from telehealth during the pandemic.

The report also found that the rapid increase in telehealth use during the pandemic was largely facilitated by federal and state waivers that quickly relaxed telehealth regulations and made it possible to meet the growing demand for virtual visits during the pandemic. These waivers expanded both the types of providers eligible for telehealth reimbursement and the number of sites where services could be accessed, most notably from patient homes. Reimbursement rates also were increased to be comparable to in-person visits, and penalties for failing to comply with privacy and confidentiality rules were dropped.

The report notes that the increased use of telehealth resulting from all of these changes contributed to more efficient healthcare delivery, but not everyone benefited equally. Vulnerable populations were more likely to feel the effects of the pandemic than other groups, and were generally less likely to receive timely healthcare services, including through telehealth. Disparities in availability and affordability of, among others, high-speed internet and adequate broadband services contributed to this gap in service delivery. The report’s authors suggest that temporary policy changes must be made permanent, and strategic investments in telehealth infrastructure must be made, in order to capitalize on the advances in telehealth experienced during the pandemic.

Read the report.

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Meet Our New Executive Director

BruceT — Wed, 01 Sep 2021 18:56:34 +0000

Meet Our New Executive Director

9.1.2021

News

Dr. Kimberly Boller, who assumed the role of Executive Director on September 1, discusses her priorities as The Nicholson Foundation approaches its close at the end of 2021.

Dr. Kimberly Boller assumed the role of Executive Director of The Nicholson Foundation on September 1. In the following conversation, she discusses her priorities as The Nicholson Foundation approaches its close at end of 2021.

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Tell us a little about yourself.

I am the daughter of an immigrant and a first generation college graduate. I’m a mother, a traveler, and a researcher by nature. I came to the Foundation three years ago with 25 years of experience conducting policy and program evaluations for the federal government and foundations. My primary areas of research at Mathematica Policy Research were in early childhood care and education, including Early Head Start, home visiting, parenting, quality rating and improvement systems, and healthy development.

From those experiences, I was curious about how evidence and data drive funding decisions at the state and local levels. The Nicholson Foundation seemed like a great place to learn and try out ideas that support evidence-based funding and partnerships grounded in the best health and early childhood science.

What will your priorities be as Executive Director as The Foundation prepares to wind down by December 31, 2021?

We have a lot of work to do in just four months. My number one job is to bring the Foundation in for a soft and graceful landing. Our team will tie up the remaining loose ends and be able to say that we accomplished what we set out to do.

Another major goal is publication and dissemination of our legacy book, Changing Systems, Changing Lives, which describes lessons we learned as a grantmaking foundation. We are also busy wrapping up several reports that highlight key areas of the Foundation’s work.

Telling the story of our work is important for New Jersey and nationally, especially for private and public grantmakers trying to wrap up areas of funding, and that’s a story we have to tell. It’s also important for us to lift up the stories of our grantees and partnerships so this work can continue.

And finally, I'm looking forward to supporting our incredible team as members head on their next professional and personal adventures. Some of us are moving ahead professionally and some are retiring. I can’t wait to see what folks decide to do next.

What legacy/impact do you hope The Foundation leaves behind when it closes?

We have done some unique things. That includes partnering with government and community to make an impact on addressing equity — both racial and economic—across our portfolios in recent years. This is one thing I hope folks will take from what we've learned.

Another lesson we have to share is for foundations to listen and learn from others who have done the work before them and the communities most affected by their work. Also, focusing on systems is extremely important and can be critical to bring new models and approaches into a state and even nationally—to try out, adapt, and see how they work over time.

You started working at The Nicholson Foundation in 2019 as Chief Strategy & Evaluation Officer. What have you enjoyed about that role?

Bringing together the Foundation’s work in maternal and child health as part of the Nurture New Jersey campaign led by First Lady of New Jersey, Tammy Snyder Murphy, has been meaningful to me. This public-private-community partnership leads the nation in implementing strategies that aim to eliminate racial inequities in maternal and infant mortality in our state. By working together, government, philanthropy, and community will keep the momentum going and make sure all of New Jersey’s mothers and their babies are safe and thrive. We must do this.

I also enjoyed learning about how family philanthropy works and being part of a community of grantmakers in New Jersey. Seeing how purpose drives philanthropists, individuals within foundations, and their partners to aid and support grantees and their communities has been fabulous. Getting to know our Board and their purpose has been a joy.

Finally, what is something not a lot of people know about you?

In the traveling category, I have made the most of academic tourism. For decades I have consulted internationally and gone to conferences around the world. I have been to six continents, more than 23 countries and 40 plus states, and I want to get to all 50 states in my lifetime. I love traveling with my daughter, husband, sisters, friends, and colleagues; travel is really a ball for me and a great opportunity for learning.

Where can we connect with you?

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How The Nicholson Foundation Has Worked to Bring Quality Infant and Toddler Care to NJ Families

BruceT — Thu, 26 Aug 2021 16:43:28 +0000

How The Nicholson Foundation Has Worked to Bring Quality Infant and Toddler Care to NJ Families

8.26.2021

News

This latest entry in Our Legacy Series describes The Nicholson Foundation's work to improve access to affordable, quality infant and toddler care and education in New Jersey, while also encouraging a supportive policy agenda to help advance those goals.

Introduction

Birth to three years is the crucial developmental stage in which the building blocks for a person’s life-long health and well-being are laid down. This is why, for the past decade, The Nicholson Foundation has made it a priority to improve access to affordable, quality infant and toddler care and education in New Jersey, while also encouraging a supportive policy agenda to help advance those goals. This latest entry in Our Legacy Series describes how we have pursued this work and what we’ve achieved.

The case for quality care – and the barriers to it

While working to improve New Jersey’s social service and healthcare systems during The Nicholson Foundation’s first 10 years (2002-2012), staff became increasingly drawn to the potential of early childhood education as a means to prevent social ills before they manifest. As a growing body of research showed, development during the early years is key to future success in school, in work, and in life. That’s because the brain grows and develops faster between birth and age 3 than at any other time of life. During this time, the capacity for thinking, emotion, language, and self-regulation are formed.

Unfortunately, quality child care for infants and toddlers can be hard to find in many parts of the state. Forty percent of New Jersey communities are “child care deserts,” where there isn’t enough quality infant and toddler child care to meet families’ needs. High cost too is frequently a problem—particularly for parents of very young children. At the same time, the child care provider workforce has been poorly compensated for years. The majority of infant and toddler educators and family child care providers—40% of whom are women of color—earn poverty level wages and more than half rely on public benefits.

Laying the research groundwork As a first step, the Foundation funded a series of groundbreaking studies and reports to shed light on the issues facing the early childhood care and education industry in New Jersey, including:

A 2013 National Institute for Early Education Research study that examined the quality of early childhood care and education centers, Early Head Start centers, and family child care services.
Studies that Advocates for Children of New Jersey (ACNJ) conducted between 2013 and 2018 that identified and analyzed barriers to quality and accessible early childhood care and education.
A 2017 New Jersey Policy Perspective study on the subsidy rates that help low-income families pay for care.
The 2018 New Jersey Family Child Care Landscape Report, a comprehensive review of family child care and the policy and programmatic changes that could improve these services.

Building a comprehensive quality rating system

To boost the quality of early child care and education in New Jersey, The Nicholson Foundation played a key role in the development of Grow NJ Kids, the statewide quality rating and improvement system (QRIS) for child care. Pioneered in other states, QRIS’s serve to both link parents to available quality care and spur providers to improve the quality of what they offer. Through QRIS, trained raters visit child care providers and evaluate them on a number of aspects of care. Center ratings range from one to five stars, with incentives and support to help them make the changes that will lead to a higher level of quality.

In 2013, the Foundation funded a series of pilots to help jump start a statewide QRIS. In 2014, New Jersey began to test drive Grow NJ Kids in three counties. Foundation support for the community-based organization, Programs for Parents, underwrote the establishment of Grow NJ Kids in 16 early childhood care and education centers in Newark’s lowest income neighborhoods. In addition, from 2014 to 2018, the Foundation supported Steps to Quality, a parallel quality improvement project for family child care providers. This project became the foundation for incorporating family child care into Grow NJ Kids. A final component of Grow NJ Kids went into effect in 2018—a tiered reimbursement system that bases compensation to providers who receive subsidy payments on the level of quality of their programs and services.

Making the case for public support

As of 2018, 69% of New Jersey mothers with children younger than age 6 were in the workforce, which underscores the importance of quality child care to both to children’s future development and the economy. However, attention and public funding streams to early years care has always lagged what school-aged children receive.

To change this dynamic, The Nicholson Foundation and the Turrell Fund have partnered over the years on a number of initiatives designed to educate the public, policymakers, and other stakeholders about the importance of care for infant and toddlers and the need to improve New Jersey’s earliest education system.

The foundations first supported an ACNJ initiative called Right From the Start NJ, designed to inform state government staff and policymakers about the importance of supporting infant and toddler care. In 2017, Right From the Start NJ expanded into a public outreach campaign including social media channels, a website, and a partnership with the Caucus Educational Corporation to produce content for public television. The communications campaign aimed to generate broad public awareness of the crucial developmental period from birth to age three and boost support for greater public investment in the early years.

In response to the devastating toll of the COVID-19 pandemic on the child care landscape—which caused more losses for many already struggling providers and forced some to close permanently—Nicholson and Turrell launched a new campaign in 2020 called Reimagine Child Care. The campaign activated more than 1,000 advocates. The #ReimagineChildCare Twitter messaging campaigns alone resulted in 670,000 impressions in six months.

Carrying Forward

Now that there is an infrastructure in place, there is reason to be hopeful that this new funding will ensure that more children receive quality care. Earlier investments The Nicholson Foundation made in partnership with state government agencies, ACNJ, the National Institute on Early Education Research at Rutgers, the NJ Association for the Education of Young Children, and others, will continue to inform decision-makers about key issues relating to care and education for New Jersey’s youngest children long after the Foundation closes its doors at the end of 2021.

At the same time, to ensure that philanthropic support continues to guide progress in this area, the Foundation helped shape the Early Years Funding Collaborative, a coalition of eight New Jersey foundations focused on children ages 0 to 8 and their families.

The goal of all of this work is to make quality early child care and education more equitable, affordable, and accessible for families across New Jersey, and help the next generation have the strongest possible start to a healthy life.

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The Nicholson Foundation Announces Leadership Transition

BruceT — Mon, 16 Aug 2021 17:09:04 +0000

The Nicholson Foundation Announces Leadership Transition

8.19.2021

News

The Nicholson Foundation announced that Executive Director Arturo Brito is leaving to become President and Chief Executive Officer of the Children’s Health Fund and that Kimberly Boller, currently Chief Strategy and Evaluation Officer, has been named his successor.

The Nicholson Foundation today announced that Executive Director Arturo Brito, MD, MPH, will be leaving his post to become President and Chief Executive Officer of the Children’s Health Fund in New York City. Kimberly Boller, PhD, currently Chief Strategy and Evaluation Officer, will take over as the Foundation’s Executive Director September 1.

“With the Foundation planning to close down the end of this year, these personnel moves were anticipated,” said Jan Nicholson, President of The Nicholson Foundation. “Each, in its own way, is very gratifying—Arturo’s for the significance of the role he is assuming, and Kim’s, for the deserved recognition inherent in her appointment.” She added, “I have long felt that the Foundation’s influence will not end when it is no longer working to improve lives overlooked by America’s prosperity. Instead, momentum will be carried forward in the knowledge, skills, and connections our staff will take to new positions they find for continuing their personal commitment to help others.“

Dr. Brito joined the Foundation as Executive Director in March 2017. A pediatrician with a public health background, he was instrumental in knitting the Foundation's early childhood and health portfolios into a cohesive whole, and strengthening its connections to state government leadership. The Foundation’s work in Adverse Childhood Experiences and maternal and infant health was enabled and inspired by the health/early childhood combination.

In his new role, Dr. Brito will oversee the work of The Children’s Fund, which operates 26 programs in 15 states, providing comprehensive healthcare for 100,000 children in underserved communities across America.

Chief Strategy and Evaluation Officer since joining the Foundation in February 2019, Dr. Boller has worked closely with Dr. Brito on managing day-to-day work, providing strategic direction, and leading the Foundation’s evaluation and learning agendas. Over the past year, she also directly managed the program staff and assumed responsibility for planning and implementing the close of operations.

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Evaluation of In-Home Visitation Project Shows Effectiveness of Community Health Workers in Helping Control Children’s Asthma

BruceT — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 19:20:37 +0000

Evaluation of In-Home Visitation Project Shows Effectiveness of Community Health Workers in Helping Control Children’s Asthma

8.12.2021

News

An evaluation of a Nicholson-funded project found that Community Health Workers were effective at helping families learn how to control environmental factors in their homes that triggered or exacerbated asthma in children enrolled in the state’s Medicaid program.

An evaluation of the Nicholson-funded New Jersey In-home Asthma Intervention Pilot Project found that Community Health Workers (CHWs) were effective at helping families learn how to control environmental factors in their homes that triggered or exacerbated asthma in children enrolled in the state’s Medicaid program. Over the course of the intervention, the percentage of children participating in the project whose asthma was assessed as “controlled” nearly doubled—from 26.7% to 44.7%.

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The project was launched in 2017 in partnership with the New Jersey Department of Health. Among the grantees was Boston-based Health Resources in Action (HRiA), which received funds starting in 2016 to provide technical support during the design and implementation phases and later to conduct an evaluation.

Asthma can lead to high healthcare costs, emergency department visits, and missed school and work days.

Over two years, CHWs made home visits to 174 families who have children enrolled in Medicaid. Home visitors educated parents and caregivers on asthma management skills that resulted in improving the health and well-being of children suffering from poorly controlled asthma, mostly through mitigating environmental conditions in the home known to trigger attacks. Parents and caregivers were educated about potential in-home asthma triggers, including dust, mold, cleaning products, tobacco smoke, and pests.

Assessments of changes in children’s asthma conditions were based on questionnaires CHWs administered to caregivers. CHWs also made observations in homes of participating families to determine whether steps had been taken to mitigate factors that can trigger asthma.

In underwriting this project and the subsequent evaluation, The Nicholson Foundation sought to demonstrate both the effectiveness of home interventions to help control asthma and further expand the role that CHWs can play in improving health outcomes, lowering healthcare costs, and reducing inequities in New Jersey.

According to 2018 data, some 9.1% of New Jersey children under age 18 years were estimated to have asthma (vs. 7.0% national average). More so, Black, non-Hispanic children aged 4 years and younger were reported to have rates of asthma hospitalizations and emergency department visits four to five times higher than among White, non-Hispanic children in the same age group.

Researchers concluded that the evaluation shows that this kind of home intervention offers great potential to reach more families enrolled in Medicaid. HRiA and Rutgers Center for State Health Policy are also evaluating the cost effectiveness of the intervention, which could help New Jersey’s Medicaid program determine whether to invest in its expansion throughout the state.

Read the evaluation.

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New Jersey Launches Actions 4 ACEs Campaign to Bolster Efforts to Address Childhood Trauma

BruceT — Wed, 23 Jun 2021 11:37:30 +0000

New Jersey Launches Actions 4 ACEs Campaign to Bolster Efforts to Address Childhood Trauma

6.23.2021

News

New Jersey’s efforts to address childhood trauma took a major step forward with the launch of a campaign to raise awareness of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and to encourage people statewide to get involved in prevention and healing activities.

New Jersey’s efforts to address childhood trauma took a major step forward on Wednesday, June 23, 2021 with the launch of a campaign to raise awareness of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and to encourage people statewide to get involved in prevention and healing activities.

The centerpiece of the campaign is the new Actions 4 ACEs website, funded by The Burke Foundation, one of the members of the New Jersey ACEs Collaborative, a public-private partnership that also consists of The Nicholson Foundation, the Turrell Fund, and the New Jersey Department of Children and Families (DCF).

ACEs are stressful or traumatic events that occur before the age of 18 and can lead to lifelong physical, mental, and emotional damage. ACEs include experiences such as divorce and witnessing parental violence. Adverse community events such as poverty and systemic racism can further compound the effects of ACEs.

The Actions 4 ACEs campaign was formally unveiled during a virtual press conference that featured New Jersey First Lady Tammy Murphy, Executive Director of DCF’s Office of Resilience Dave Ellis, as well as speakers representing the Office of the Attorney General, and law enforcement officers and educators working in New Jersey.

The initial target audiences for the campaign are educators and law enforcement officers, with the goal of informing both groups about what ACEs are and what steps they can take to address them and lessen their impact. The campaign complements and builds on other efforts already underway that the New Jersey ACEs Collaborative has been leading to make the state a trauma-informed, healing-centered place, where children and families can thrive regardless of who they are or where they live.

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How Nicholson Foundation Support Has Led to Improved Community-Based Healthcare Delivery

BruceT — Fri, 28 May 2021 16:05:38 +0000

How Nicholson Foundation Support Has Led to Improved Community-Based Healthcare Delivery

6.3.2021

News

In our latest Legacy Series entry, we look at how The Nicholson Foundation has worked to improve the well-being of vulnerable populations in New Jersey by supporting community healthcare coalitions to become Regional Health Hubs.

This entry in Our Legacy Series looks at how The Nicholson Foundation has worked to improve the well-being of vulnerable populations in New Jersey by supporting community healthcare coalitions. A combination of providers, hospitals, local government and social service agencies, community healthcare coalitions pool their efforts so they can reach more people with high quality services and at lower cost. For this summary, we focus on our 10-year investment, totaling over $3 million, that supported the Trenton Health Team’s evolution from an ad hoc coalition of municipal officials and healthcare providers into an organization that is nationally recognized for its innovative approach to engaging not only healthcare professionals but state agencies, community service organizations, and grassroots advocates.

The Need for a Community-Wide Approach to Healthcare

The Trenton Health Team (THT) was formed in 2006 through a partnership of Capital Health (CH), St. Francis Medical Center (SFMC), Henry J. Austin Health Center (HJAHC), and the City of Trenton Department of Health and Human Services. It was created in response to the closure of Mercer Medical Center, which, up until then, had been a primary source of healthcare for many Trenton residents.

At the time, the health status of the city’s residents lagged behind that of the rest of the state. This was reflected in poor birth outcomes, high rates of people living with HIV, as well as high incidence rates for cancer, diabetes, hypertension, and obesity. In addition, city residents’ use of emergency rooms was 54 percent higher than the national norm. The use of emergency rooms, instead of visiting primary care doctors, contributed to an exodus of doctors to the suburbs, further exacerbating shortages in primary care providers.

Goals and Outcomes of Nicholson’s Early Grants to the Trenton Health Team

In awarding its first grant to THT in 2011, The Nicholson Foundation sought to help it expand and increase community-wide access to affordable, high-quality primary care. The Foundation also provided resources that would enable THT to broaden the scope of its work to include community-wide, population health level initiatives. Examples of impressive outcomes and achievements from THT’s work from 2011 to 2015 include:

Shortening the time for Trenton residents to receive care. The wait time for appointments was slashed from 74 to 2 days at SFMC and from 37 days to 2 days at HJAHC.
Reducing community reliance on hospital emergency room care for non-emergency health issues. Emergency department visits dropped more than 30 percent at SFMC and more than 60 percent at CH. At the same time, inpatient stays fell more than 70 percent at SFMC and nearly 43 percent at CH. That resulted in decreases in hospital charges of 73 percent at SFMC and 237 percent at CH among those individuals with very high hospital-related healthcare expenses.
Instituting care management—an approach to coordinating care among providers to more effectively address the physical and behavioral healthcare and social needs of Trenton residents.
Making better use of data to coordinate and deliver care through implementation of the Trenton Health Information Exchange (HIE). HIEs are databases that enable doctors and other providers to share medical information about patients across departments and among facilities. The THT’s HIE contributed to better coordinated healthcare and clinical decisions, fewer repeated services, and improved patient care throughout Greater Trenton.

Investing in the HIE was one of the Foundation’s most significant contributions to THT. Nicholson support enabled THT to link social determinant and health data, leading to better decisions about how to allocate care.

In supporting THT during this time period, the Foundation had a complementary goal in mind: To help it become a Medicaid Accountable Care Organization (ACO), an ambitious payment model designed to improve outcomes while reducing costs. ACOs were made possible by the 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act. Helping Trenton and other coalitions become Medicaid ACOs was very much in keeping with the national health reform wave of that time. Medicaid ACOs were expected to be a real systems game-changer.

It would take four years for THT to become one of three New Jersey applicants to receive Medicaid ACO certification in 2015 (the other two—also Foundation grantees—were Camden Coalition of Health Care Providers and the Greater Newark Health Care Coalition).

Earning Regional Health Hub Status (2015-2020)

THT's designation as a Medicaid ACO and Nicholson Foundation support over subsequent years helped it to continue to improve how it addressed the health needs of community residents.

Despite steady progress, by 2019 it became evident that aspects of the ACO model were holding back THT and the other New Jersey demonstration sites from fully achieving their hoped-for potential. The main challenge—discussed in a Nicholson-funded 2019 report issued by the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute’s (Quality Institute) Medicaid Policy Center—was the lack of funding to sustain the ACOs once they were established.

To overcome limitations of the ACO model, the Quality Institute, along with several of the coalitions, successfully advocated for New Jersey to enact legislation establishing the Regional Health Hub Concept. In January 2020, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed into law a bill establishing a statewide Regional Health Hub program. The legislation named the Trenton Health Team, Camden Coalition, Greater Newark Health Care Coalition, and the Health Coalition of Passaic County as New Jersey’s first Regional Health Hubs.

The Regional Health Hubs were set up as non-profit organizations dedicated to improving healthcare delivery and health outcomes, with an eye toward bringing communities together on important public health initiatives. The Hubs maintained some functions from the ACO model, such as responsibility for operating or using a regional HIE, and facilitating care for patients with especially complex medical conditions. The Hubs also took on an expanded role in convening multi-sector partnerships and serving as local experts and conduits for state health priorities. For example, in 2020, THT played a key role in coordinating how Trenton-area healthcare providers and community organizations responded to COVID-19.

Among its many projects that address the upstream determinants of health, THT has worked in recent years to revitalize substandard housing stock in Trenton, connect households to free healthy food options, and address adverse childhood experiences.

The transformation of THT is emblematic of how several of the coalitions the Foundation supported over the years have grown and matured to become key players in their communities on health and health-related issues.

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Nicholson Senior Program Officer Co-Hosts New “State of Mind” Podcast

BruceT — Tue, 04 May 2021 19:49:30 +0000

Nicholson Senior Program Officer Co-Hosts New “State of Mind” Podcast

5.5.2021

News

Raquel Mazon Jeffers, Senior Program Officer at The Nicholson Foundation, is co-hosting State of Mind, a new podcast exploring how the COVID-19 pandemic has illuminated the need for better mental health and substance misuse treatment.

Raquel Mazon Jeffers, Senior Program Officer at The Nicholson Foundation, is co-hosting a new podcast series, State of Mind, with Melissa Bailey, Principal at Bowling Business Strategies. The podcast explores how the COVID-19 pandemic has illuminated the need for better mental health and substance misuse treatment, and sparked innovative approaches to transform how this care is delivered.

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In their weekly podcasts, Mazon Jeffers and Bailey interview experts who are on the forefront of efforts to transform the way mental healthcare is delivered to children, adults, and families.

Among the topics the podcast series explores:

strategies for addressing racism and implicit bias, which may have a role in racial disparities from COVID deaths to mental illness and substance misuse
innovative uses of telehealth to deliver mental health services
how the COVID pandemic has impacted parents and, in turn, children’s mental health, and
the role of community health workers in addressing the mental health and substance misuse needs of communities

Listen to State of Mind.

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Nicholson-Funded Analysis Finds New Jersey Spends Above the National Average on Children

BruceT — Tue, 27 Apr 2021 13:08:15 +0000

Nicholson-Funded Analysis Finds New Jersey Spends Above National Average on Children

4.27.2021

News

An Urban Institute (UI) analysis funded by The Nicholson Foundation finds that New Jersey spends substantially more public dollars on children than the national average, and New Jersey draws down less in federal dollars per child than the average state.

An Urban Institute (UI) analysis finds that New Jersey spends substantially more public dollars on children 0-18 than the national average. Based on 2016 data—the latest available—expenditures for PreK-12 education, children’s health, child-related tax credits, and economic supports for families totaled $16,329 per child, or some $4,000 more on average than for all states combined.

More so, findings in this analysis, underwritten by The Nicholson Foundation, show that this higher rate of spending is due to New Jersey’s investment in public education. For instance, PreK-12 funding is nearly $5,000 more per child than other states and includes compensation for teachers and administrators, curriculum and instructional materials, early education provided through Head Start and state prekindergarten, school meals, transportation, facilities, and services delivered outside of public schools, such as early intervention and vocational education.

At the same time, New Jersey’s high rate of spending for public education is paying off: the state ranks first in PreK-12 education outcomes nationwide, according to the Annie E. Casey’s 2018 Kids Count assessment of preschool participation, fourth grade reading, eighth grade math, and high school graduation.

The UI findings are drawn from its State-by-State Spending on Kids Dataset, a comprehensive accounting of public spending on children from 1997 through 2016. It draws on the U.S. Census Bureau’s Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances, as well as several federal and other noncensus sources.

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As shown in the chart above, the analysis of 2016 data also finds that New Jersey’s spending on children differs significantly by category, with much higher expenditures for PreK-12 education than for health, child-related tax credits, and economic support for children and families.

Here are other key findings from the analysis:

New Jersey spends similar amounts to its neighboring states, especially after adjusting for regional differences in the cost of living. Public investment per child in New Jersey is similar to total per child spending in Pennsylvania, slightly above spending in Connecticut, and below levels in Delaware and New York.
New Jersey draws down less in federal dollars per child than the average state. In 2016, federal funding averaged $3,522 per child in New Jersey, compared to $4,376 per child in the United States overall. This is in striking contrast to New Jersey’s higher than average spending from state and local funding.
New Jersey continues to outpace most neighboring states in spending on public PreK-12 education. Adjustments for cost of living put New Jersey’s PreK-12 spending at $11,170, above spending in three neighboring states, but still lower than New York ($11,948). New Jersey’s other public spending on children (a total of children’s health, tax credits, and economic supports) is in line with Connecticut ($3,229 versus $3,104), but well below that of other neighboring states.
New Jersey spends less than average outside of education. While spending differences in children’s health, tax credits, and economic supports are small ($439, $170, and $167, respectively), they add up—especially for children in households with low incomes who may rely on more than one of these supports.

Download Public Spending on Children in New Jersey

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