How do we ensure that policies affecting the health and well-being of youth and families are informed by evidence-based research? That’s the question LDI Senior Fellows David Rubin, MD, MSCE, and Kathleen Noonan, JD, set out to answer when they formed PolicyLab at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) in August 2008.

Nine years later, PolicyLab has grown to include more than 25 faculty and 50 dedicated research and policy staff working to reduce disparities in care for the most vulnerable and improve outcomes for all children and families. Partnering with practitioners, policymakers, communities and other organizations, PolicyLab strives to ensure that care provided for children is informed by the best research.

PolicyLab’s research goes beyond the confines of academic journals and lands in the hands of decision makers and policymakers. They are national experts on access to health care coverage for children in this country, with a recent study showing a shift in how low-income working families are insuring their children, and a recent commentary pointing out threats to the near-universal coverage of children we have achieved.

PolicyLab has had an outsized impact on youth and families. Their impact spans all levels of government, from Philadelphia’s action plan to reduce maternal and infant mortality and morbidity, to Pennsylvania’s reimbursement of long-acting reversible contraceptives for adolescent girls, to the federal government’s approach to reducing child abuse and neglect fatalities. PolicyLab research also addresses key themes of adolescent health and well-being, the equitable delivery of care, and intergenerational family services, or services that identify and address parents’ and caregivers’ physical, social and mental health needs to improve children’s health.

We’re proud of our PolicyLab colleagues and can’t wait to see what their next decade will bring.