The U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA’s) dedication to promoting mental health and preventing substance misuse is supported by data collection efforts aimed at understanding the magnitude of these problems. This includes the collection of data on drug and alcohol-related emergency department (ED) visits from the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN). DAWN is a nationwide public health surveillance system that captures data on ED visits related to recent substance use and misuse directly from the electronic health records of participating hospitals. In 2021, the DAWN identified 149,021 (unweighted) drug-related ED visits from 52 participating hospitals. An analysis of final 2021 DAWN data presents nationally representative weighted estimates, including percent and unadjusted rates per 100,000, for all drug-related ED visits, nationally representative weighted estimates for the top five drugs in drug-related ED visits, the assessment of monthly trends and drugs involved in polysubstance ED visits in a subset of sentinel hospitals, and the identification of drugs new to DAWN’s Drug Reference Vocabulary. Key findings include that male patients accounted for 61% of all drug-related ED visits with a rate of 2,672 per 100,000. The top five drugs involved in drug-related ED visits in 2021 were alcohol (41.70% of all drug-related ED visits), opioids (14.79%), methamphetamine (11.29%), marijuana (11.19%), and cocaine (4.77%). Fentanyl-related ED visits rose throughout 2021, peaking in fourth quarter of the year.

This report summarizes the results from the 16th survey of criminal history information systems conducted for U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics by SEARCH, The National Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics, since 1989. It presents data on the functions and status of state criminal history files as of December 31, 2020. The report found that 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Guam report the total number of persons in their criminal history files as 114,376,500, of which over 95% are automated records. In 49 states and the District of Columbia, an average of 69% of all arrests in state databases have final case dispositions reported. Additionally, the report notes that as of April 2022 the National Fingerprint File (NFF) had been implemented in 24 states, including Florida. The NFF is a database of fingerprints, or other uniquely personal identifying information, relating to an arrested or charged individual maintained by the FBI to provide positive identification of record subjects indexed in the Interstate Identification Index (III) system. The report found that 49 states, the District of Columbia, and Guam processed 20,302,100 fingerprint records in 2020; of these, about 37% were used for criminal justice purposes and 63% were used and submitted for noncriminal justice licensing, employment, and regulatory purposes.

This literature review examines the prevalence and consequences of children exposed to violence (CEV); describes definitional challenges for researchers and program providers; reviews risk and protective factors related to CEV; summarizes approaches to preventing, reducing, and addressing the consequences of CEV, such as trauma-informed care; and provides outcome evidence related to interventions that seek to prevent or address CEV. Throughout the literature review, there is an emphasis on delinquency and juvenile justice–related outcomes. This review concludes that risk factors for CEV vary among children and youth. For example, child and youths who are LGBTQ, suffer from depression, live in disadvantaged communities, or who have parents with histories of antisocial behavior, offending, mental health problems, low educational levels, or were victims of child abuse themselves have higher likelihood of being exposed to several types of violence. Additionally, the review notes that researchers have identified protective factors that may buffer the effects of CEV, such as self-regulation, family support, school support, and peer support.

The 2020–21 National Teacher and Principal Survey is a nationally representative sample survey of public and private K–12 schools, principals, and teachers in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. State-level data are also available for public schools, principals, and teachers. This survey collects data on core topics including teacher and principal preparation, classes taught, school characteristics, and demographics of the teacher and principal labor forces. About 80% of all public K–12 school teachers were non-Hispanic White, 9% were Hispanic, 6% were non-Hispanic Black, 2% were non-Hispanic Asian, and 2% indicated they were non-Hispanic and of two or more races. Among private K–12 school teachers, about 83% were non-Hispanic White, 8% were Hispanic, 4% were non-Hispanic Black, 2% were non-Hispanic Asian, and 2% indicated they were non-Hispanic and of two or more races. Both public and private K–12 school teachers reported having an average of about 15 total years of teaching experience, of which an average of about 8 years was spent teaching at the current school. On average, teachers in traditional public schools reported more total years of teaching experience than did teachers in public charter schools (15 years compared with 10 years). Compared to public K–12 school teachers, a lower percentage of private K–12 school teachers had taken graduate or undergraduate courses across a range of subjects prior to their first year of teaching, including lesson planning, learning assessment, classroom management techniques, serving students with special needs, serving students from diverse economic backgrounds, using student performance data to inform instruction, and teaching students who are limited-English proficient or English-language learners. For example, 78% of public school teachers had courses in lesson planning compared to 66% of private school teachers.

The Biden administration released a discussion draft of a gainful employment (GE) rule earlier this year that included a new minimum earnings test based on high school graduates’ earnings. Data show that one in five certificate programs at public institutions and nearly 70% of certificate programs at for-profit institutions would fail this test, causing them to lose eligibility for federal aid. Understanding the characteristics of these programs and the students they enroll can inform the ongoing development of the GE rule. Some of the key findings found that 20% of undergraduate certificate programs at public institutions and 70% of certificate programs at private for-profit institutions fail the high school earnings test. Under the previous GE rule, virtually every program at public institutions would have passed and only 20% of programs at for-profit institutions would have failed the test. Average earnings among certificate programs at public institutions that fail the test are only $18,348, much lower than the average of $34,669 among all certificate programs at public institutions. It is unclear whether the proposed high school earnings test will be included in the final GE rule. But a better understanding of the programs at public institutions at risk of failing that test should help policymakers assess whether the test will have the effects they intend.

In 2019, MDRC launched the Scaling Up College Completion Efforts for Student Success (SUCCESS) project to improve college completion rates for traditionally underserved students, such as students from low-income backgrounds and students of color, at community and colleges that have open or minimally selective admissions policies. The SUCCESS program integrates multiple evidence-based components proven in previous studies to help students stay enrolled and graduate, including proactive and holistic coaching, full-time enrollment, financial incentives, and data-driven program management. Relatively little is known about how to best serve adult learners―that is, the segment of students enrolled in the program who are 25 years of age or older―and improve their graduation rates. This brief highlights the experiences of adult learners in the SUCCESS program at four institutions―Essex County College in New Jersey; Ivy Tech Community College Kokomo and Ivy Tech Community College Indianapolis, both in Indiana; and Stark State College in Ohio. It explores how SUCCESS supports adult learners, and how it, and other programs, can do more for this population. Namely, this research reveals that adult learners found the SUCCESS coaching component particularly valuable in terms of keeping them accountable and providing resources; the full-time enrollment requirement posed a challenge for balancing academic and personal responsibilities; although students appreciated the financial incentive, many still had unmet financial needs; and beyond the SUCCESS components, older students reported that they could benefit from additional flexibility, community-building opportunities, and support with technology. These findings offer opportunities to consider how programmatic and institutional structures may promote student success or present additional barriers to graduation for this student population.

For this research, the authors evaluated employment trends for people with and without disabilities over the course of the COVID-19 recession and subsequent economic recovery, both overall and by occupational category (essential, non-essential, teleworkable, non-teleworkable, frontline, non-frontline) using the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Population Survey. The authors estimate percent changes in employment-to-population ratios and identify differences between disabled and non-disabled employment in each quarter broadly and within specific occupational categories. As the COVID-19 recession began in the second quarter of 2020, people with disabilities experienced employment losses that were proportionately similar to those experienced by people without disabilities. However, during the subsequent economic recovery, the employment rate of people with disabilities has grown more quickly in fourth quarter 2021 through the second quarter of 2022, driven by increased labor force participation. These employment gains have been concentrated in teleworkable, essential, and non- frontline occupations. These findings suggest that people with disabilities are disproportionately benefiting from the rapid recovery from the initial economic contraction at the start of the pandemic.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and Russian invasion of Ukraine highlight the vulnerabilities of supply chains that lack diversity and are dependent on foreign inputs. This report presents a short, exploratory analysis summarizing the state of critical materials — materials essential to economic and national security — using two case studies and policies available to the U.S. Department of Defense to increase the resilience of its supply chains in the face of disruption. China is the largest producer and processor of rare earth oxides (REOs) worldwide and a key producer of lithium-ion battery materials and components. China's market share of REO extraction has decreased, but it still has large influence over the downstream supply chain–processing and magnet manufacturing. Chinese market share of the lithium-ion battery supply chain mirrors REO supply bottlenecks. If it desired, China could effectively cut off 40% to 50% of global REO supply, affecting U.S. manufacturers and suppliers of defense systems and platforms.

This report calls attention to how decisions about new network architecture for fifth generation (5G) technology have fallen short in affirmatively addressing avoidable cybersecurity risk while also introducing new cybersecurity concerns, and suggests how those concerns might be mitigated by a combination of agile regulatory oversight, corporate focus, and government funding. 5G technology promises to bring the high-speed, low latency wireless infrastructure necessary for the smart era. Yet, 5G also brings with it new cybersecurity challenges. The authors note two primary challenges for cybersecurity: In the first challenge, the standard virtualizes many of the network functions formerly performed by hardware to now be performed by software. The second challenge to cybersecurity is delivered by how network operators have responded to the move from hardware to software by supplementing and, in some cases, replacing traditional infrastructure vendors and their closed proprietary systems with an expanded set of vendors supplying equipment using open protocols. The authors argue that it is essential for national policy to establish expectations for the security and behavior of the new network and should address issues such as identification and assignment of the risks and responsibilities created by 5G, both at the industry and government level and reconciling the business objectives of 5G supplier diversity with the supply chain risks it creates.

In recent years, there has been growing support for quality representation for child welfare-involved parents. Both the American Bar Association and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommend that attorneys representing parents involved in dependency proceedings do so using a multidisciplinary team. The 2021 Legislature amended statute to encourage and facilitate the use of multidisciplinary legal representation (MLR) teams by the Offices of Criminal Conflict and Civil Regional Counsel. MLR teams must include an attorney, a social worker, and a parent-peer specialist. Four of the five Civil Regional Counsels (RCs) are in various stages of MLR implementation. RCs in regions 1, 2, 3, and 4 have hired social workers; RCs 3 and 4 have hired parent-peer specialists; and RCs 1 and 4 have also hired family advocates to work as part of MLR teams. RCs are prioritizing cases that meet specific criteria, including those involving substance abuse and/or mental health issues or young parents who were recently in foster care. The four RCs currently implementing an MLR program reported that the offices are waiting to implement at least one program component until the receipt of federal Title IV-E funds. RC5 has reported that it does not plan to implement an MLR program. OPPAGA received data on cases that received MLR services in Fiscal Year 2021-22 from two RCs. In Fiscal Year 2021-22, RC1 provided MLR services in 74 dependency cases with 147 children. The MLR team provided parents with a variety of services, including additional case management and assistance with case plan tasks and visitations. In the same fiscal year, RC3 provided MLR services in 159 cases with 273 children. The primary services the MLR teams provided were case management, attendance of hearings, and assistance with housing.

In the United States, obesity and severe obesity in children and adolescents are defined using threshold values from the 2000 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sex-specific body mass index (BMI) for-age growth charts. BMI z-scores and percentiles from the 2000 CDC BMI-for-age growth charts are also used to monitor children’s weight status over time and to evaluate obesity treatments. Parameters to calculate percentiles and corresponding z-scores were derived from selected percentiles between the 3rd and 97th. Use of the BMI-for-age growth charts for children and adolescents with extremely high BMI requires extrapolation beyond the 97th percentile, which leads to compression of BMI z-scores values into a very narrow range and is not recommended. This report evaluates eight alternative BMI metrics for monitoring weight status in children and adolescents with extremely high BMI. All eight alternatives offer a solution to the problem of compression at extreme BMI values. However, the extended method 1) improves the characterization of BMI distributions at very high values using additional data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1999–2016 (instead of relying on extrapolation), and 2) preserves current CDC 2000 z-scores and percentiles below the 95th percentile, which allows seamless transitions among weight categories of obesity, overweight, and healthy weight.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, federal and state restrictions hindered many aspects of clinical trials, such as recruiting patients, which made completing required research tasks difficult or impossible. Many existing guidance documents and policies were redesigned rapidly during the pandemic to accommodate COVID-19-related emergencies. Such policies laid the foundation for change in clinical research. The purpose of this clinical research regulatory review is to determine how regulatory bodies such as the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Office of Human Research Protections, and institutional review boards have responded to challenges in running clinical trials during the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings include how research activities were paused in the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, which allowed the integrity of clinical trials to be maintained due to regulatory agencies implementing appropriate and timely guidance documents, and that research regulatory agencies, such as the FDA, released more than 70 guidance documents related to conducting clinical research during the COVID-19 pandemic and continues to update these periodically.