Getting Kids Covered
Nearly 5 million children in the United States who currently lack health insurance are eligible for low-cost or free health care coverage through the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and Medicaid, but they are not enrolled. Since 1997, the Foundation has been working to address this problem through its Covering Kids initiative. The program now supports projects in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Covering Kids has funded numerous state Medicaid agencies and local coalitions that help remove barriers—some administrative, some based on perceptions about eligibility for these programs-to enrolling children in SCHIP and Medicaid.

Covering Kids recently evolved into the $55-million, four-year Covering Kids and Families^® program, reflecting the Foundation's commitment to help states also cover parents and other adults who work in jobs that do not provide health coverage for them or their children.

In 2002, the Foundation awarded $28.6 million to 34 sites as part of the Covering Kids and Families program. Projects include one in Arizona, where state health officials are training emergency room, adult learning center, trade school and community college staff about the availability of public insurance and how they can help promote and assist with enrollment in these programs. Michigan began an online “e-application” process for all health coverage programs. Texas eliminated the face-to-face interview previously required of Medicaid recipients after the first six months of coverage.

A communications campaign has been instrumental to the success of the Covering Kids and Families program. The “Back-to-School” campaign involves advertising to raise awareness about eligibility for public coverage programs, and, each year, sponsorship by the Foundation and its partners of a late summer effort to publicize the importance of enrollment at the key time when children are returning for a new school year. The Back-to-School campaign has generated more than half a million calls into state and federal toll-free hotlines since 1997. More than 4,000 organizations nationwide have become actively engaged in finding, enrolling and retaining eligible children in Medicaid and SCHIP.