Title: A Local Approach to Health Insurance Outreach and Enrollment
Author:
Section/SPIG: Maternal and Child Health
Issue Date:
Chester County, Pennsylvania, is an affluent area with the highest household median income ($72,288) in the state. However, there are significant pockets of poverty in communities throughout the county, and poverty disproportionately affects female-headed households and women of color. Approximately one in five, or 20.4 percent, of female-headed households with children under 18 live below the poverty level (compared with 4.4 percent of non-female-headed households). Chester County is also home to a growing Latino population moving into the county to work in the mushroom farms and/or service industries. An estimated 45,000 people in Chester County lack health coverage, putting many families at risk for significant health problems. Moreover, research has shown that prenatal care, provided early in a woman’s pregnancy and consistently thereafter, plays an important role in keeping women and infants healthy, and that lack of insurance is a significant barrier to accessing prenatal care.
Since 1995, Maternal and Child Health Consortium (MCHC) of Chester County has worked to enroll pregnant and parenting women into health insurance to help ensure prompt prenatal care and to help meet the Healthy People 2010 goal of enrolling all pregnant women into health insurance. MCHC has identified and enrolled thousands of uninsured women, infants, and children into health coverage through advocacy, education, and the coordination of a countywide enrollment effort. MCHC’s Family Health Advocates, most of whom are bilingual (Spanish/English) and bicultural, work with pregnant and parenting women in their Healthy Start program to fill out the Medicaid or S-CHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program) application and gather the necessary supporting documents. MCHC has also partnered with several other community-based organizations in the county to provide an enrollment fund to allocate funds as an incentive for these agencies to enroll uninsured women and children. Together, MCHC and the partnering agencies enrolled 1,116 uninsured Chester County women, children, and men into health coverage in 2004.
MCHC also helps coordinate annual outreach efforts for the county. Each year, MCHC coordinates a local countywide effort as part of the national Covering Kids and Families’ Back to School Campaign, sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This year, MCHC held numerous outreach activities to help increase the number of children enrolled in CHIP and Medicaid. MCHC shared health insurance information throughout the county, including through display tables, at community events and fairs, and through presentations to business and civic organizations. The display tables included a raffle for children’s backpacks with school supplies provided by Office Depot, First Presbyterian Church of West Chester, and the Exton, Penn. Exchange Club.
MCHC’s health insurance work is made possible through its federal Healthy Start grant and local funding partners including the Brandywine Health and Wellness Foundation, The Huston Foundation, Phoenixville Community Health Foundation, United Way of Chester County and others. For more information, contact Lee Ann Sullivan, Director of Development, Maternal and Child Health Consortium, (610) 344-5370, extension 112, <lsullivan@ccmchc.org>.