Expanding Health Care Coverage

Project Title

Strategic Development and Implementation Support for Children’s Coverage Enrollment Drives

Grant Amount

$102,125

Priority Area

Expanding Health Care Coverage

Date Awarded

April 29, 2008

Region

Outside New York State

Status

Closed

Website

http://www.spitfirestrategies.com/

While the State’s insurance coverage policies for children are relatively expansive, many who are eligible remain without coverage.

The New York State Department of Health’s Office of Health Insurance Programs (OHIP) set the goal to inform families about the availability of coverage and to enroll eligible uninsured children and teenagers. Under this grant, Spitfire Strategies (Spitfire) designed and supported focused enrollment drives to promote the expansion of children’s health insurance coverage in New York. Spitfire developed a strategic communications plan with the messages, approaches, and tactics to create a sufficient buzz around enrollment drives in target communities.

This project was part of a larger NYHealth authorization that funded a series of quick-strike analyses to help the New York State Department of Health’s (NYSDOH’s) Office of Health Insurance programs find ways to streamline and expand its public health insurance programs.

Read an NYHealth special report that contains a summary of findings from this authorization.

NYHealth has learned from similar work that media campaigns and enrollment drives work well to increase enrollments and renewals in public health insurance programs, but their success is limited to the time period of the campaign itself. This issue emerged under an NYHealth-sponsored campaign run by Public Health Solutions to increase awareness among Chinese non-English speaking Medicaid beneficiaries about re-enrollment.

While the State’s insurance coverage policies for children are relatively expansive, many who are eligible remain without coverage. The New York State Department of Health’s (NYSDOH) Office of Health Insurance Programs set the goal to inform families about the availability of coverage and to enroll eligible uninsured children and teenagers. Under this grant, Spitfire Strategies (Spitfire) will design and support focused enrollment drives to promote the expansion of children’s health insurance coverage in Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, and New York City. Spitfire will develop a strategic communications plan with the messages, approaches, and tactics to create a sufficient buzz around enrollment drives in target communities.

Spitfire will serve as strategic council to key NYSDOH staff, facilitating planning sessions to define desired outcomes and specific target audiences for the enrollment drives, as well as to review research findings, identify key decision makers, and finalize outreach strategies for each drive and the effort overall. Spitfire will develop content and design of materials for the enrollment drives, and conduct media outreach to increase family awareness of the enrollment drives.