Engaging public schools in outreach to Medicaid and SCHIP-eligible children and their families

We will present findings from the CHILD “Connecting Health Insurance to Lunch Data” project, a three-year endeavor to boost public health insurance coverage among Wisconsin's children. Income eligibility criteria for Wisconsin's free/reduced price lunch programs (FRPL) are the same as the state's Medicaid and SCHIP programs. Based on this link, CHILD provided targeted outreach for insurance enrollment in 10 selected school districts varying in size, ethnic/racial makeup, and locality for the 2007 school year. There is much to learn from working with school districts to encourage active participation by schools in assuring health insurance coverage for their student populations. We will present early results from our trials of a variety of outreach strategies, including evaluation of our process and outcomes. Our process evaluation builds on personal accounts and detailed documentation of the steps involved in working with the schools. The outreach evaluation measures our success in prompting new applications among student families in targeted districts. This presentation will provide other public health professionals with: 1) effective and practical outreach strategies that connect FRPL and public health insurance programs; 2) an understanding of challenges and opportunities in collaborating with school districts on this type of project; and 3) information about existing federal regulations that allow schools to share FRPL enrollment information to identify and reach out to potentially eligible students and encourage their application to and enrollment in those public health coverage programs.