Public school, community, and university partnerships to increase public health insurance coverage of eligible children and families

We will present findings from CHILD: “Connecting Health Insurance to Lunch Data.” CHILD is a three-year project partnering with public schools and community entities to develop and test strategies to better identify and enroll children eligible for Wisconsin's SCHIP health coverage. Nationally, three-quarters of the uninsured are estimated eligible for public health coverage, yet traditional, broadly-aimed information campaigns fail to reach them. This suggests a need for a more targeted – and effective - approach to outreach. Wisconsin public schools already find they are responding to the needs of uninsured children and their families: two-thirds of pupil services staff report providing SCHIP assistance. Yet more than half describe their knowledge as “not very good.” This project investigated and assessed the effectiveness of the many opportunities in existing school processes and programs - including free/reduced price lunch - to integrate better SCHIP information and assistance directly to those in need. Project evaluation considers both the implementation process and effectiveness using multiple methods: staff and parent surveys, key informant interviews, family focus groups, and matched data between student data and SCHIP enrollment files. Findings discussed will address the knowledge and behavior changes for both families and staff as well as the realities of implementing SCHIP activities, and in many cases data collection and sharing, in schools where resources are often at a premium. Overall, schools are enthusiastic for the increased awareness brought by the project and a next step will be to address the feasibility of broader implementation and sustainability.