Workshop: D8 - Successful Models for Enrolling and Retaining Children in Medicaid and CHIP through School-Based Health Clinics Part II

This workshop will be held on Tuesday, June 28th from 8:00am to 10:45am in Ballroom A.

Oregon Healthy Kids has conducted a successful campaign to enroll kids and teens in CHIP, Medicaid, and other state funded programs available for uninsured youth up to age 19. The campaign utilizes community partners to reach families and help them enroll as well as standard marketing techniques like print ads, radio, billboards, and social media. In March, we celebrated enrolling an additional 85,000 kids and teens since 2009. At the celebration, we heard one mom’s story that emphasized the difference health insurance can make to family.

A key component of the Healthy Kids outreach, enrollment, and retention campaign are the schools. Our school-based efforts have reached over 560,000 K-12 students in every school district across Oregon. We developed strategies that utilize events and systems already established in the schools, strengthen grassroots relationships between the schools and community partners, and consider the role of every professional and advocate in the school community.

Oregon Healthy Kids was also selected as a pilot state for CMS’s Get Covered. Get in the Game campaign. This opportunity included a visit from US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in August of last year. She was joined by Oregon’s then Governor Kulongoski at a high school in Portland to accept the challenge of helping to enroll 5 million children over the next 5 years into the children's Medicaid and CHIP programs.