Connecting kids to coverage healthy kids 2022 outreach and enrollment cooperativeagreements CMS-2Y2-22-001 - the ohio association of foodbanks will lead a connecting kids to coverage collaborative…

Connecting kids to coverage healthy kids 2022 outreach and enrollment cooperativeagreements CMS-2Y2-22-001 - the ohio association of foodbanks will lead a connecting kids to coverage collaborative made up of central ohio agencies focused on identifying uninsured children, parents, and pregnant people, assisting with the medicaid enrollment process, and ensuring that eligible households maintain coverage. As of 2019, almost 14,000 children were uninsured in franklin county. Groups more likely to be uninsured include households with adults who are hispanic, have low incomes, have limited english proficiency, and/or have low educational attainment. The columbus connecting kids to coverage (CKC) collaborative will focus on outreach, engagement, and enrollment activities that reach uninsured children at every stage of childhood and adolescence and by reaching the adults that care for them. Additionally, the columbus CKC collaborative will work in partnership to assist ohio medicaid/chip beneficiaries with renewing and retaining or reapplying for inappropriately terminated coverage following the end of the covid-19 public health emergency (PHE). Members of the columbus CKC collaborative all have direct experience with providing assistance with enrollment in public benefit programs, from publicly-funded child care to snap to medicaid and health insurance marketplace plans. The collaborative is led by ohio's largest ACA navigator grantee and will utilize CKC dollars to maximize the existing get covered ohio campaign, increasing saturation of CKC and get covered ohio campaign messages in franklin county and referring ohioans outside CKC targets to ACA navigator services. Through hiring outreach and enrollment specialists, engaging community-based partner organizations and people with lived experience with poverty, enhancing the presence of the CKC campaign in ohio, and conducting ongoing performance assessment, the columbus CKC collaborative will connect hundreds of central ohio households with health coverage from medicaid/chip, particularly those from groups with disparities in health coverage and health outcomes. The goal of the columbus CKC collaborative is to decrease the uninsured rate among franklin county children, parents, and pregnant people and reduce disparities in health insurance coverage by race, ethnicity, income, and LEP and education status.