North Dakota Medicaid’s 1915(i) approach to addressing social determinants of health for clients with behavioral health diagnoses
March 4, 2022
Nationwide, state and federal governments as well as the healthcare system are thinking about how to address the social determinants of health (SDOH). Medicaid has been a leader in this work because the program serves millions of citizens who are likely to be at risk for needing assistance meeting their social needs. State Medicaid programs have several policies they can utilize to address social determinants of health.
This presentation will describe the policy journey of North Dakota from its development, federal approval, to implementation.
Director of medical services for the North Dakota Department of Health; research associate professor at Pennsylvania State University
Knapp is a former Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow for the U.S. House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce Committee from 2017-2018, where she researched and helped draft bills related to opioids in public health and Medicaid, Medicaid drug pricing and other health policies.
Her Medicaid and CHIP public policy experience also includes working for the Colorado Office of State Planning and Budgeting and Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing. There she developed executive branch budget requests and participated in the development of an innovative 1115 waiver to streamline CHIP and Medicaid eligibility systems resulting in economic efficiencies and increased access to care.
Knapp’s professional experience also includes applied academic research and consulting. As a research associate professor at Pennsylvania State University, she was involved in health policy and health economics research and served as director of an international consortium focused on connecting research to build capacity and drive innovation in health care. At the University of Florida, she collaborated with colleagues on over $20 million in grants and contracts to fund Medicaid and CHIP health policy and health economics research projects evaluating quality of care measures, primary care delivery reform, Medicaid waivers and managed care programs.
She earned her doctoral and master’s degrees in economics and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in child health services research from the University of Florida in Gainesville and has a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of South Florida in Tampa.