Click  to expand category
|
HRET Health Research & Educational Trust of New Jersey
ResearchCompleted Projects
Covering Kids
Covering Kids: New Jersey Health Access Initiative for Low-income Uninsured Children
Table of Contents:
Project Overview
This three-year project (1999 – 2002) was part of the first phase of a national program designed to maximize enrollment of eligible, uninsured children in New Jersey in a public health coverage program (NJ FamilyCare or Medicaid). The project worked to develop and conduct outreach strategies and programs that:
- Identify and enroll eligible children into Medicaid and NJ FamilyCare
- Simplify the enrollment process
- Coordinate existing coverage programs for low-income children
Five local pilots were formed in the poorest areas of the state, or areas with the highest number of uninsured people, and each addressed a segment of the target population:
- Urban-based (Gateway Maternal and Child Health Consortium; Essex county)
- Rural-based (Tri-County Community Action Agency; Cumberland, Salem and Cape May counties)
- Hospital-based (St. Joseph's Medical Center; Passaic county)
- Minority-based (LaSalud Hispana; Bergen and Hudson counties)
- Faith-based (Community Church of God – BCSB Cathie Family Life Development Center; Union County)
The project operated through a statewide coalition of government departments and a broad group of over 37 state and community-level agencies to promote the project's innovative activities and assist in achieving its goals. The coalition included representatives from clinics, health plans, industry, academia and community-based organizations that provide care to children or advocate on their behalf. HRET was selected to serve as lead agency of this coalition.
Implementation of this project is supported by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and by matching fund sources.
Top of Page
Statewide Accomplishments
Covering Kids developed a statewide training program for outreach workers and provided sessions in each county, training a total of 1,400 participants from schools, faith-based organizations, legislative offices and other community-based agencies. Extensions: Voluntary Statewide Association for New Jersey Outreach Workers, in collaboration with the Office of NJ FamilyCare and Association for Children of New Jersey, developed the curriculum of this training program, which covers details about the enrollment process, policies and regulations, as well as tactics for effective outreach.
The statewide project worked in collaboration with the National Program Office to implement nationwide outreach efforts such as the Back-to-School campaign. Outreach efforts also included development of educational and outreach resources for distribution to state and community-based organizations that spread the word about NJ FamilyCare, including:
- Directory of Outreach and Application Assistance Sites
- Outreach Toolkit for Faith-based Organizations
- Outreach Toolkit for Hospitals
- NJ FamilyCare Outreach Worker Training Manual
- "Families Love NJ FamilyCare" awareness video
Toward its simplification efforts, the statewide coalition was successful in presenting barriers faced by consumers and outreach workers to the State and advocating for the simplification of the application and eligibility determination processes. A survey was conducted, collecting information from 625 eligible or enrolled families about their knowledge of the NJ FamilyCare program and the difficulties they experienced with application, enrollment, redetermination and utilization of services; and the findings were reported to the State. In order to ensure coordination of different state health coverage programs, the Covering Kids project worked closely with the State's "Building Bridges to Family Health" program.
Top of Page
Local Pilot Accomplishments
The local pilots were engaged in a series of aggressive outreach efforts, including:
- Reaching out families of newborns at hospitals
- Identifying families of children without health insurance who receive care in emergency rooms and pediatric clinics
- Targeting eligible families currently enrolled in charity care
- Informing and assisting with enrollment of uninsured children at WIC sites, Head Start sites, schools, churches, clinics and through the use of mobile vans
- Hosting informational health fairs
- Providing multilingual (Spanish, Creole, Arabic) outreach workers and producing and distributing multilingual resources
- Publishing informational and motivational articles and ads in English and Spanish
- Conducting door-to-door canvassing in communities
According to reports from these pilots, over 21,000 families were assisted with NJ FamilyCare application completion and follow-up through the Covering Kids project. Some of the most successful sites for pilot outreach activities included schools, hospitals/clinics, physician's offices and health fairs.
Top of Page
Publication
|
|