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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
Robert Sillen, Exec Dir, Santa Clara Valley Health & Hospital System, 751 S. Bascom Avenue, San Jose, CA 95128, 408, 885-4030, lori.estrada-kirn@hhs.co.scl.ca.us and Sabrina Valade, MPH, Community Outreach Services--Children's Health Initiative, Santa Clara Valley Health & Hospital System, 2325 Enborg Lane, Suite 220, San Jose, CA 95128.
Santa Clara Valley Health & Hospital System (SCVHHS), in collaboration with the County Board of Supervisors, a labor advocacy organization, and an organization of faith-based groups, initiated the Children's Health Initiative (CHI) to provide universal health coverage to uninsured children whose families earn up to 300% of the FPL. The CHI built upon previous efforts of SCVHHS to recruit, enroll, and retain uninsured families and children into Medi-Cal and Healthy Families (CHIP) and added a third, locally-developed program for ineligible children, Healthy Kids, which is available to undocumented children and children with incomes up to 300% of the FPL who are ineligible for Medi-Cal or Healthy Families. Santa Clara County was the first in the nation to develop and implement a health insurance program to provide comprehensive health, dental and vision care access to all income-eligible, uninsured children, including undocumented children.
This unique program is the result of detailed political strategy and significant lobbying activity. Its success to date stems from that as well as the central role played by the local public hospital, health system and social services agency in overcoming numerous, well-documented obstacles and barriers to outreach and enrollment. Learn the strategies and techniques used which enabled the development and implementation of this first-of-a-kind program in a mere six months. To date, 30,000 children who were uninsured as of January 1, 2001 now have comprehensive coverage under this program.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Access, Public Hospitals
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.