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When the state announced that cuts would be made in the Oregon Health Plan, health care researchers across the state were stunned. “We knew it was going to be bad,” says Matthew Carlson ’91, assistant professor of sociology.

Carlson and a group of other PSU grads became part of an innovative collaborative research effort. Rather than separate groups of researchers competing for funding and perhaps even duplicating efforts, all the interested researchers formed the Oregon Health Research and Evaluation Collaborative to coordinate their projects.

Members of the collaborative formed subgroups to study aspects of the issue. Carlson joined forces with three PSU grads: Jeanene Smith, M.D., MPH ’01 and Tina Edlund ’79, both of the Office for Oregon Health Policy and Research, and Charles Gallia, PhD ’05 of the Oregon Office of Medical Assistance Programs. Also on the team is Bill Wright, analyst for the Center for Outcomes Research and Education at Providence Health System.

Their research topic was the impact of the state’s changes on plan members’ insurance coverage, access to and use of health care, financial solvency, and health status. The team devised a 75-question survey to be taken every year for three years by a random sample of 2,783 people covered by the Oregon Health Plan when the initial wave of changes occurred.

The first survey was in fall 2003, six months after the initial changes. Based in part on those findings, legislators in 2004 reinstated some of the cuts for the poorest of the poor—those reporting zero income—and for those who qualify for traditional Medicaid.

The researchers surveyed the same 2,783 people in fall 2004, a few months after the legislators acted, and again found problems. The 2005 Oregon Legislature removed premium payments for those with the lowest income. The final survey, scheduled for fall 2005, is expected to capture effects of those changes.