Below are brief summaries of Grant Results Reports available on recent grantmaking outside of RWJF’s main grantmaking portfolios.

States Test Systems to Exchange Health Information Easily—and Securely
Health care does not have the capacity to easily and safely exchange information. To address this shortcoming, RWJF created the Multistate Initiative to Help Build a Health Information Infrastructure—also called HealthKey. From 1997 to 2002 information technology organizations from five states tested appropriate uses of technology, determined best practices and shared knowledge and lessons learned. Several states tested systems to transmit information securely. Among the breakthroughs:

• Washington State implemented electronic laboratory reporting for all 34 local health jurisdictions.

• North Carolina consolidated immunization data into one database.

• A nonprofit group in Massachusetts created a system for secure business-to-business communications.

• A nonprofit group in Utah developed a tool for provider organizations to store their security policies and procedures in one file.

See the National Program Report at www.rwjf.org/reports/npreports/HII.htm.

Researching the Financial and Ethical Challenges of Increased Longevity
To help policy-makers and public health officials understand and plan for expected increases in life expectancy to 100 and older due to improvements in medical care, staff at the Washington-based Brookings Institution researched the issue during discussions with experts and by soliciting reports from authors. In 2004 they published their findings in a book titled “Coping with Methuselah: The Impact of Molecular Biology on Medicine and Society.” The authors note that: (1) policy-makers can offset the cost of increased longevity by increasing the age of eligibility for pension and health benefits and encouraging later retirement; (2) increases in medical spending resulting from increased longevity could be modest; (3) the effect of increased longevity on saving, investment and inter-national capital flows is highly uncertain; and (4) the medical and biological advances that will contribute to increased longevity will create many ethical challenges that will confront policy-makers, ordinary citizens and ethicists. See the Grant Results Report at www.rwjf.org/reports/grr/039564.htm.