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This report presents the findings of a quick-turn study conducted between February 2021 and May 2021. During this time frame, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic had resulted in 83 million confirmed infections and more than 1.8 million deaths worldwide. In the Middle East, there were close to 21 million cases reported and 336,000 COVID-19 deaths. Many countries in the Middle East struggled with health care capacity and access prior to the pandemic, and this crisis has placed significant additional strain on health care delivery in the region. Evaluating strategies used by health care systems and public health and policies implemented by governments in the Middle East during the ongoing pandemic is critical to understanding and disseminating successful approaches to meeting the health care demands of populations in the region. This report outlines the results of an exploratory analysis of five Middle East countries - Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar, and Tunisia. Drawing from a literature review and qualitative data collected from focus groups and one-on-one interviews conducted between March 2021 and May 2021, the authors identify common challenges regarding COVID-19 faced by the countries studied, highlight successes and innovations in addressing these challenges, and recommend strategies for strengthening internal infrastructure and regional cooperation between countries. This work should be of interest to regional and international stakeholders as they continue to combat the pandemic, and its findings could inform future research around pandemic response.

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The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) virus is creating unprecedented stresses on hospital and critical care systems. Hospitals, health care systems, states, and regions urgently need to assess their resources, identify potential bottlenecks, and create strategies for increasing critical care surge capacity, which refers to the resources needed to care for the sickest patients with the novel coronavirus. In this report, the authors present a list of strategies for creating critical care surge capacity and estimate the number of patients accommodated, given the number of available critical care doctors and nurses, respiratory therapists, ventilators, and hospital beds. They also document the development of a user-friendly, Microsoft Excel–based tool that allows decisionmakers at all levels — hospitals, health care systems, states, regions — to estimate current critical care capacity and rapidly explore strategies for increasing it. The strategies are organized into two tiers. Tier 1 includes contingency capacity strategies: adaptations to medical care spaces, staffing constraints, and supply shortages in a way that can increase capacities without significant impact on medical care delivery. Tier 2 includes crisis capacity strategies: changes that likely will have significant impact on routine care delivery and operations.

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Women's health has suffered from insufficient research addressing women. The research community has not widely embraced the value of this research, and the impact of limited knowledge about women's health relative to men's is far-reaching. Without information on the potential return on investment for women's health research, research funders, policymakers, and business leaders lack a basis for altering research investments to improve knowledge of women's health. As part of an initiative of the Women's Health Access Matters (WHAM) nonprofit foundation, RAND Corporation researchers examined the impact of increasing funding for women's health, beginning with a focus on Alzheimer's disease and Alzheimer's disease–related dementias (AD/ADRD), which result in substantial illness burden, health care costs, caregiving burden, and mortality. In this report, the authors present the results of microsimulation models used to explore the potential for enhanced investment in women's health research, in terms of the economic well-being of women and for the U.S. population.

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Women's health has suffered from insufficient research addressing women. The research community has not widely embraced the value of this research, and the impact of limited knowledge about women's health relative to men's is far-reaching. Without information on the potential return on investment for women's health research, research funders, policymakers, and business leaders lack a basis for altering research investments to improve knowledge of women's health. As part of an initiative of the Women's Health Access Matters (WHAM) nonprofit foundation, RAND Corporation researchers examined the impact of increasing funding for women's health research on coronary artery disease (CAD). CAD was chosen partly because physiological differences between men and women affect factors that relate to the development and progression of cardiovascular disease. In this report, the authors present the results of microsimulation models used to explore the potential for enhanced investment in women's health research, in terms of the economic well-being of women and for the U.S. population.

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Women's health has suffered from insufficient research addressing women. The research community has not widely embraced the value of this research, and the impact of limited knowledge about women's health relative to men's is far-reaching. Without information on the potential return on investment for women's health research, research funders, policymakers, and business leaders lack a basis for altering research investments to improve knowledge of women's health. As part of an initiative of the Women's Health Access Matters (WHAM) nonprofit foundation, RAND Corporation researchers examined the impact of increasing funding for women's health research, with a focus on the following three disease areas: brain health, immune and autoimmune disease, and cardiovascular disease. Using microsimulation analyses, the research team studied the societal cost impact of increasing research funding in three diseases that present a large disease burden for women: Alzheimer's disease and Alzheimer's disease–related dementias (AD/ADRD), coronary artery disease (CAD), and rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The results establish the potential for investment in women's health research to realize gains beyond additional general research investment and point the way to a concrete, actionable research and funding agenda.