Can an Informative Letter Reduce Gun Crime and Be Cost-Effective? A Study of Los Angeles

Hunt, Priscillia; Parast, Layla; Weinberger, Gabriel

doi:10.7249/rr1934

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 26 publications

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“…Within agencies, policy notices may be used to increase individuals’ compliance with mandates, laws, or best practices, but the success of this approach depends on the extent to which they are purely informative, include penalties, or appeal to community or professional norms. 20 , 21 To our knowledge, the effect of policy notices that include centralized action planning when mandates are not met—a relatively common approach—on provider behavior or patient outcomes has not been previously studied.…”

Section: Vha Policy Noticementioning

confidence: 99%

Article Commentary: Randomized Program Evaluation of the Veterans Health Administration Stratification Tool for Opioid Risk Mitigation (STORM): A Research and Clinical Operations Partnership to Examine Effectiveness

et al. 2019

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The United States is facing an opioid crisis in which overdose is the leading cause of injury death—misuse of opioids constitutes the vast majority of those deaths. In 2016 alone, over 42,000 people died from opioid overdose, an increase of 27% from the prior year. Deployment of the Stratification Tool for Opioid Risk Mitigation (STORM), a clinical decision support tool to improve opioid safety, is one response by the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) to the opioid crisis. STORM identifies VHA patients at very high risk of opioid-related adverse events and lists potential risk mitigation strategies. Deployment of STORM also helps VHA meet certain requirements of the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016. In alignment with the VHA's learning health care system initiative, a multidisciplinary team designed a randomized evaluation of a policy approach to mandating case reviews of very-high-risk patients identified by STORM and the impacts of patient inclusion versus exclusion in mandated STORM case reviews using a stepped-wedge design. The STORM evaluation involves drafting the policy notice, shepherding it through the VHA approval process, and implementing the cluster randomized design. This mixed-methods evaluation includes (1) a qualitative assessment of medical center implementation strategies with the aim of understanding of how STORM is incorporated into practice, and (2) quantitative analyses of the relations between policy mandates and STORM inclusion on opioid-related adverse events. The findings from this synergistic research design will yield critical insights for VHA leadership to refine opioid prescribing-related policy and practice.

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Section: Vha Policy Noticementioning

confidence: 99%

Article Commentary: Randomized Program Evaluation of the Veterans Health Administration Stratification Tool for Opioid Risk Mitigation (STORM): A Research and Clinical Operations Partnership to Examine Effectiveness

et al. 2019

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Choosing Representatives to Deliver the Message in a Group Violence Intervention

Wheeler

McLean

Becker

et al. 2019

Justice Evaluation Journal

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When is a Match Sufficient? A Score-based Balance Metric for the Synthetic Control Method

Parast

Hunt

Griffin

et al. 2020

Journal of Causal Inference

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In some applications, researchers using the synthetic control method (SCM) to evaluate the effect of a policy may struggle to determine whether they have identified a “good match” between the control group and treated group. In this paper, we demonstrate the utility of the mean and maximum Absolute Standardized Mean Difference (ASMD) as a test of balance between a synthetic control unit and treated unit, and provide guidance on what constitutes a poor fit when using a synthetic control. We explore and compare other potential metrics using a simulation study. We provide an application of our proposed balance metric to the 2013 Los Angeles (LA) Firearm Study [9]. Using Uniform Crime Report data, we apply the SCM to obtain a counterfactual for the LA firearm-related crime rate based on a weighted combination of control units in a donor pool of cities. We use this counterfactual to estimate the effect of the LA Firearm Study intervention and explore the impact of changing the donor pool and pre-intervention duration period on resulting matches and estimated effects. We demonstrate how decision-making about the quality of a synthetic control can be improved by using ASMD. The mean and max ASMD clearly differentiate between poor matches and good matches. Researchers need better guidance on what is a meaningful imbalance between synthetic control and treated groups. In addition to the use of gap plots, the proposed balance metric can provide an objective way of determining fit.

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Can an Informative Letter Reduce Gun Crime and Be Cost-Effective? A Study of Los Angeles

Cited by 3 publications

References 26 publications

Article Commentary: Randomized Program Evaluation of the Veterans Health Administration Stratification Tool for Opioid Risk Mitigation (STORM): A Research and Clinical Operations Partnership to Examine Effectiveness

Article Commentary: Randomized Program Evaluation of the Veterans Health Administration Stratification Tool for Opioid Risk Mitigation (STORM): A Research and Clinical Operations Partnership to Examine Effectiveness

Choosing Representatives to Deliver the Message in a Group Violence Intervention

When is a Match Sufficient? A Score-based Balance Metric for the Synthetic Control Method

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