1. Neighborhood Walkers and Talkers Sign Up New Orleans Families When parents apply for Medicaid or CHIP, their attempts to enroll are too often unsuccessful because of complicated, confusing procedures. Details are at: The Casey Foundation's Investment in Health. 2. WIC: A Door to Health Care With 30 percent of low-income, uninsured children in California participating in WIC--the special supplemental food program for women, infants and children--this report looks at linking WIC and the state's health insurance programs, offering important lessons for other states working to increase health insurance enrollment for low-income children. http://www.childrenspartnership.org 3. LEP and Medicaid/CHIP HCFA's 31 August 2000 letter to state Medicaid directors on policy guidance for persons with limited English proficiency is available in PDF format: http://www.cms.hhs.gov/smdl/downloads/smd083100.pdf 4. Expanding Medicaid Coverage to Low-Income Parents Reduces Number of Uninsured Children, New Research Finds Expanding state Medicaid programs to provide coverage for parents also increases the number of low-income children with health insurance, according to a new study from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The research compares changes in children's health coverage in states that extended coverage to low-income parents to changes in coverage in states that did not institute such expansions. While more than 9 out of 10 children from families with income below twice the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) are now eligible for either Medicaid or the State Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), 25 percent of them, or 7.9 million children, remained uninsured in 1998. Part of the reason for this insurance gap for children, the study concludes, is the ineligibility of the children's parents for public insurance. Medicaid eligibility for parents typically ends at about 60 percent of the FPL, or about $10,000 for a family of four. In the past two years, ten states have expanded their Medicaid programs to include parents in low-income families, an option the 1996 welfare reform law provided. In addition, the Health Care Financing Administration recently announced it would consider waivers that would allow states to use CHIP funds to provide coverage to parents. To download the report entitled "The Importance of Family-Based Insurance Expansions: New Research Findings About State Health Reforms," go to http://www.cbpp.org and click on Expanding Health Insurance. 5. States Don't Monitor Care of Children on Medicaid Many states have turned to managed care models for containing costs and delivering Medicaid health services to low-income children. A review from the "Health and Health Care in the Schools" finds that states monitor preventive services under these plans, but do little to assess how well the plans are meeting children's health care needs. http://www.gwu.edu/