US maternal and infant health outcomes are among the worst among wealthy nations. In this episode, Milbank Quarterly Editor Alan Cohen speaks with Bridgette Courtot, a senior research associate in the health policy center at the Urban Institute, about her article in the December 2020 issue of the Quarterly, which looks at the opportunity that Medicaid, the dominant insurer in the United States, has "to move the needle for moms and babies."

Around 1980, the United States started lagging other high-income countries on life expectancy, and life expectancy trends began diverging widely by state. Jennifer Karas Montez, a sociologist at Syracuse University, and her colleagues wanted to find out why. In this episode, she discusses the results of a Milbank Quarterly study that found more liberal state policies, such as a higher minimum wage, are generally associated with longer life expectancy.

COVID-19 is demonstrating just how much poverty can affect health. In this episode, Emilie Courtin of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Peter Muennig of Columbia University, discuss their June Milbank Quarterly article, which systematically reviewed all known randomized social policy experiments in the United States that included health outcomes. Their work found that early life, income-related, and health insurance policies all have the potential to improve health.

Alan Cohen, editor of The Milbank Quarterly, talks with Amanda Mauri of the University of Michigan and her colleague Rebecca Haffajee of the Rand Corporation about their research article evaluating state opioid prevention policies.