• Mission & Governance
• Services Overview
• How to Get Involved
• Standing Committees
• NCSL Foundation

• Issue Areas: A-Z
• State-Federal Relations
• NCSL Standing Committees
• News from D.C. and the States

• About State Legislatures
• Elections, Campaigns & Redistricting
• NCSL's StateConnect Directory
• Web Sites

• Online Guide to NCSL Services
• Staff Sections and Networks
• Meetings & Professional Development
• Staff Directories

• Meetings Calendar
• Online Registration
• Meetings Home Page
• Legislative Summit

• Bookstore
• State Legislatures Magazine
• NCSL's StateConnect Directory

Background Materials for CHAP

NCSL Building Blocks: An Orientation to Health Policy for State Legislators 
Frequently Asked Questions...
This set of briefing papers on important health policy topics is part of an orientation package for state legislators on the fundamentals of state health policy.  Each paper provides basic, introductory information on policy and program areas in the form of most frequently asked questions (FAQs) by legislators and brief, objective and non-technical answers.  Areas covered by this series include:  Health Care Access, Health Care Economics, Insurance and Managed Care, Long-Term Care, Medicaid, Mental Health, Prescription Drugs, Public Health, Health Care Quality, SCHIP, Substance Abuse, and the Health Care Workforce.  

Subscribe to State Health Notes.

"Introduction to State Health Policy: A Seminar for New State Legislators," March 31-April 3, 2005, Chicago, IL. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).  Archived audio streams of the following sessions are available at http://www.hsrnet.net/ahrq/newleg/:  Archived sessions:  Roles of State Legislatures and State Government in Determining Health; State Roles in Regulating Health Care Markets: Balancing Cost, Access & Quality;  Quality and Cost: Achieving Value in Today’s Health Care System; Understanding the Importance of Public Health;  Providing Access to Care, Part I: The Uninsured and the Health Care Safety;  Hot Issues in Health Care: Focus on Medicaid and SCHIP;  Health Care Workforce Issues; The Crisis in Medical Malpractice Insurance;  Prescription Drugs;  and Cost Quality, and Access: Providing Long-Term Care Services to an Increasingly Elderly and Chronically Ill Population.

Other programs from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality on a variety of topics that may be of state interest may be found at http://www.ahrq.gov/news/ulp/ulpprwrk.htm

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, in addition to supporting this project at NCSL, funds projects and supports research around the country in all the policy areas covered in CHAP.  Go to their website to subscribe to updates, or to see the latest findings in these and other areas. 

The National Library of Medicine maintains an annotated list of sites with health data and health services research at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hsrinfo/hsrsites.html

Duke University has attempted to identify a single gateway to health policy information for each individual state in its State Health Policy Web Portal.

 CHAP Main