Lt. Governor Elizabeth Roberts of Rhode Island proposed legislation in 2008 to establish an exchange-like organization called “HealthHub RI.” While the legislation did not pass, she proceeded to convene a public process and study, beginning in the fall of 2008, to identify and evaluate options for a future exchange in Rhode Island. Many different stakeholders participated in this public process...

In May 1996 the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Rhode Island’s ban on advertising prices of alcoholic beverages, making Rhode Island the subject of a natural experiment for measuring the impact of advertising on prices. Using Massachusetts prices as controls, we find that while advertising stores substantially cut prices of advertised products, prices of other products, at both advertising and n...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.5888/pcd12.140583.]. In the article “Effectiveness of Fresh to You, a Discount Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Market in Low-Income Neighborhoods, on Children’s Fruit and Vegetable Consumption, Rhode Island, 2010–2011,” we inadvertently listed an author affiliation for Sara Gorham incorrectly. Ms. Gorham is affiliated with the Institute for Community Health Promotio...

Rhode Island is a state with a high incidence of tick-borne diseases, specifically Lyme disease. The Ioxedes tick which serves as vector for the three most common tick infections is endemic in both the New England and mid-Atlantic regions. However, differences in the density of infections exist within Rhode Island (RI), with the highest densities in the southern counties. Tick-borne diseases ca...

In 1993 the Rhode Island General Assembly mandated universal newborn hearing screening (UHNS) and required third-party payment for screenings (RI Public Law 23-23-13). Rhode Island was the first state in the nation to do so. Today 45 states and territories have statutes related to UNHS. A large body of research supports the effectiveness of newborn hearing screening in detecting hearing loss at...

The United States (US) is a nation of immigrants. The number of people who were born outside of the US has risen during the past 30 years. Eleven percent [33 million people] of the US population are foreign born.1 Rhode Island (RI) is both a home and a destination for immigrants from all over the world. Refugees and other immigrants present to the practitioner with clinical problems as varied a...