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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
Jennie Jacobs Kronenfeld, PhD, department of sociology, Arizona State University, Box 872101, Tempe, AZ 85287-2101, 480 965-8053, jennie.kronenfeld@asu.edu and Kathleen M. Mathieson, MA, Sociology, Arizona State University, Box 872101, Tempe, AZ 85287-2101.
The State Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) was established in 1997 in order to help provide health coverage to uninsured children. CHIP represents the largest expansion of federal health coverage since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s; 24 billion dollars are being made available to fund CHIP over the five years from Fiscal Year 1998. Given that nearly 5 million children in America are without health insurance and uninsured children experience poorer health compared to insured children, the success of CHIP is very important. Making coverage available, however, is just the first step. Effective marketing and outreach efforts will be crucial to CHIP’s success; the mere availability of coverage does not ensure that the parents of eligible children will apply and the children become enrolled. Many states have incorporated advertising campaigns in order to educate the public about the program, as well as recruit eligible children and assist in the application process. In addition to advertising campaigns, outreach strategies are another approach that has been used in enrolling children. In fact, outreach strategies have been cited as one of the major factors that will affect future CHIP enrollment. Thus, evaluations of outreach efforts are needed to understand which strategies are effective in ensuring coverage for eligible children, and to inform future outreach efforts. The current study addresses this need. We report on qualitative data gathered as part of a larger, longitudinal evaluation of eleven privately funded CHIP outreach projects in Arizona. This evaluation began in the spring of 1999, and involved in person, semi-structured interviews conducted on a quarterly basis with lead outreach workers from each project. Interviews focused on projects’ current outreach strategies, target populations, how outreach strategies have changed over time, which strategies seem to be most successful, and barriers or problems encountered in outreach. Major barriers to enrollment included organizational and administrative issues such as long waiting times for processing of applications, perceptions of parents such as a belief that health insurance is unimportant, and coverage renewal issues such as confusing renewal notices. Successful outreach strategies included use of personal contact, involvement with a larger outreach coalition, and linkage with a health care provider agency. We conclude by discussing how the experiences of CHIP outreach projects in Arizona can inform outreach strategies in other states.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Access to Health Care, Children's Health
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.