1. Hawaii Covering Kids Announcement Today is the start of our new four-year grant from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Mahalo nui loa for the wonderful outreach done by our three local projects on Hawaii and Maui and in Kalihi-Palama. Their dedication to helping children and families proved that outreach workers in community settings, using nontraditional hours, greatly enhances health insurance enrollment. We say goodbye to three local projects, but welcome two new models on Kauai and in Kahuku to our Hawaii Covering Kids initiative. More details soon! 2. Covering Kids Back-to-School 2002 Planning Center is Now Online Back-to-School 2002 is just around the corner and a special page on the Covering Kids & Families web site has all the tools you need to plan successful media events promoting health insurance enrollment in your community. The new Back-to-School 2002 Planning Center offers: * Weekly timelines for coalitions and committees to follow for event planning, * Templates and materials that can be customized with local information and free pictures from the Covering Kids photo library, * Free incentives, videotapes, and how-to guides that can be ordered on-line, and * Technical assistance conference call schedules and materials for monthly discussions. Want to get involved locally? Two Hawaii Covering Kids task forces will meet on June 14 at 11:30 am to plan statewide and pilot project activities for August 2002. 3. New Public Education Campaign An exciting partnership was recently announced by Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, CBS Television Network, and Viacom Outdoor Group. Their goal is to inform parents of uninsured children about the availability of Medicaid health insurance. A yearlong series of public service announcements (PSAs), designed to connect parents of eligible children with the national toll-free telephone number (1-877-KIDS NOW), will commence in June 2002. Locally, this telephone number connects directly to Aloha United Way 211. 4. http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/abstract/24/2/435 The Commonwealth Fund and National Health Law Program explore examples from the field to find ways to improve access to interpreter services in health care settings by developing reliable funding sources to pay for interpreters and to increase the quantity of interpreters and service quality. In most instances, these efforts represent partnerships between government, health care providers, and communities. 5. Quality of Care Survey Issued The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) released data from a survey concerning the quality of child health care. Questions were asked as part of the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) in 2000 and 2001. Parents of 6,500 children under age 18 were asked about timeliness in which children received needed and routine medical care and their experiences during the children's care. Some findings from the survey include: * Uninsured children were less likely than those with private coverage to have their parents report that their providers spent enough time with them (49.5 percent of uninsured children, 54.6 percent of children with public insurance, 57.5 percent of children with private coverage). * Of children ages 6-17, uninsured children were much less likely than children with public insurance or those with private coverage to receive care for an illness or injury as soon as their parents wanted. The AHRQ survey is at New National Survey Data Detail Quality of Health Care For Children.