New Contracts Awarded – December 2012

BPA, with its subcontractor Mission Analytics Group, is conducting the Evaluation of the Rural Community Hospital Demonstration (RCHD) for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Department of Health and Human Services. The demonstration offers participating rural hospitals an alternative payment mechanism based on costs for their Medicare inpatient services.  The purpose of the evaluation is to assess whether the demonstration has enabled hospitals meet their strategic goals, improve services for their communities, and achieve financial stability. The evaluation includes financial impact and market analyses based on publicly available extant data and qualitative analysis based on interviews and document review. Findings from this evaluation will be reported to the Congress following the completion of the demonstration.

BPA is a subcontractor to SRI international on Case Studies of Rural Education Achievement Program (REAP) Grantees, a new project funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development. BPA will contribute to study design and analysis and will conduct site visits to rural school districts. The purpose of the project is to identify: (1) the practices that REAP grantees are implementing in districts and schools, particularly in the areas of teacher recruitment and pedagogy, capacity for school turnaround, technology, and college access; (2) how the REAP program funds work in collaboration with other federal programs; and (3) the major challenges that rural schools face and how the components of the program work to help rural schools address those challenges.

As a subcontractor to IMPAQ International, BPA is participating in the Evaluation of One-Stop Career Centers' Accessibility to Persons with Disabilities for the Chief Evaluation Office of the Department of Labor. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the accessibility of America's Network of One-Stop Career Centers and partner institutions to people with disabilities.

Funded by the Office of Women’s Health, Healthy Weight in Lesbian and Bisexual Women Initiative, BPA is directing the Doing It For Ourselves (DIFO) Campaign and leading the evaluation of this intervention. DIFO is a community-based collaboration of, by, and for lesbian and bisexual (LB) women. It addresses barriers to health for the LB community, and promotes overall health and wellbeing. DIFO employs several strategies to gather and incorporate feedback from both the LB community and the health care community, including an Advisory Committee, a literature review, and focus groups with community members.

BPA has been selected as the evaluator for Design it – Build it – Ship it (DBS), a regional workforce initiative funded by the Department of Labor. The initiative represents an unprecedented opportunity for the San Francisco East Bay Area to build accelerated, intensive, and regionally articulated programs of study so that dislocated workers or unemployed adults can earn degrees or credentials of value and enable them to enter the workforce in industries with growing occupational demand and opportunities for career and wage advancement.