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Commission to Build a Healthier America Public Meeting
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Targeting Special Populations in the CKF Program
Lessons from Site Visits to Ten States
This paper is based on data collected from site visits to selected states and quarterly Covering Kids & Families (CKF) grantee reports for the same states. The evaluators asked questions about the strategies grantees were using to identify and enroll hard-to-reach populations of children, and the challenges they faced in doing this.
In site visit interviews, evaluators learned of many barriers to reaching special populations. These included:
- trust and stigma barriers, which occur when families mistrust public programs or associate them with groups they hold in low esteem.;
- cultural barriers that arise especially among immigrants, who may have different views on the necessity of health insurance and how health care should be used;
- language barriers, which prevent immigrant parents from understanding and, therefore, participating in programs; and
- target population accessibility, especially in rural regions, where word-of-mouth information-sharing is resource-intensive.