Sandra Tang

With funding provided through Governor Whitmer’s Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies initiative, YPL evaluated the effectiveness of a pilot program to allow MIHP provider agencies to bill for additional services and care coordination for families with high levels of need for basic services. Providers received reimbursement for an additional home visit, longer home visits, care coordination services, and a discharge assessment. Key outcomes included social determinants of health, such as food security, financial stability, education, employment, treatment for mental health symptoms, treatment for subs...

High-quality early learning programs boost children's kindergarten readiness and effects can last into adulthood. However, defining and measuring quality is difficult and expensive. Classroom video observations are a classic method used by education researchers to understand how the instructional environment relates to student learning. Although videos provide rich context on what occurs in the classroom, they require a significant amount of human labor and time to accurately code, which can lead to delays in acquiring information. Moreover, early education researchers have found that construc...

With initial funding from UnitedHealthcare, YPL has partnered with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Maternal Infant Health Program (MIHP) to conduct a landscape analysis to explore the statewide need for expanding home visiting services to infants and toddlers beyond 18 months. It will also identify what additional services, resources, and tools would be required to support such an expansion.

Funder: Arnold VenturesYPL has partnered with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services to conduct an impact evaluation of the Maternal Infant Health Program (MIHP). This program supports Medicaid-eligible families during pregnancy and infancy by partnering them with qualified home visitors to address their needs and connect them with resources and providers in the community. With the goal of increasing participation in the program, outreach specialists conducted enhanced recruitment to a subset of MIHP-eligible individuals in 2023-2026. YPL is evaluating the program's impact on key...

Funder: Arnold VenturesChronic absenteeism can interfere with students' learning and overall school engagement. National Heritage Academies (NHA) is investing resources in strategies to improve attendance and is partnering with YPL to learn which approaches are most effective for different groups of students and across different school settings. This project involves two complementary interventions to improve student attendance. The first is a text messaging program for parents, and the second is a case management intervention in which a dedicated school staff member works one-on-one with stud...