1. Hawaii Covering Kids Outreach
a. We currently have pharmacy partners at eighty-five locations statewide distributing 85,500 half-page flyers (bag stuffers) and posting information on their community boards. The participant list, which continues to grow, is at New Excitement.
b. Our flyer is now available in nine languages--Chinese, English, Ilocano, Japanese, Korean, Pohnpeian, Samoan, Tagalog, and Vietnamese--and copies can be downloaded at Flyers and Media Outreach Campaigns. More languages will be added soon!
c. Mahalo to our DOH Maternal and Child Health Branch partners for distributing 7,200 crayon packets with the Hawaii Covering Kids hotline and web site details along with their immunization coloring books!
2. Hawaii's New FMAP
The federal matches for our Medicaid programs from 1 October 2004 to 30 September 2005 are:
* Regular Medicaid: 58.47%
* Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP): 70.93%
3. Aloha United Way 211 Interpreters
Our contracted hotline service, AUW 211 now uses Tele-Interpreters to provide services for callers in over 150 languages.
4. Children With Special Health Care Needs: Health Insurance Patterns and Family Burdens to Provide Adequate Coverage
In a recently published analysis, Amy Davidoff used data from the 2000 and 2001 National Health Interview Survey to investigate patterns of health insurance coverage and family burdens to provide health insurance for children with special health care needs (CSHCN). She found that CSHCN were more likely to be enrolled in public health insurance and less likely to be uninsured compared with healthy children. The mean family premium contribution for private plans covering a CSHCN was $2,100 for employer-sponsored plans and $3,600 for non-group insurance. Despite having health insurance, CSHCN reported high rates of unmet need and high out-of-pocket spending. (American Academy of Pediatrics Publications, 2004)
5. State Children's Health Insurance Program: Successes, Shortcomings, and Challenges
A paper by Genevieve Kenney and Debbie Chang examines successes and shortcomings of the CHIP. Kenney and Chang report that CHIP is a source of coverage for millions of children which has improved their access to health care and sparked innovation in program design and improvements in Medicaid. At the same time, CHIP has added to the complexity of the insurance system and introduced new inequities in access to insurance. In addition, the researchers note that CHIP imperfectly targets eligible children who are uninsured, and the financing of the program is problematic because of the block-grant funding structure and the use of CHIP funds to cover adults. The authors conclude these issues must be addressed during the CHIP reauthorization process currently slated to begin in federal fiscal year 2006. [Health Affairs, 23(5); September/October 2004]
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