1. Announcements Congratulations to John Higuchi, our wonderful CyberCom project manager, who welcomed his second daughter Jacie Chiemi Higuchi into the world on 7 October. Hawaii's Child Health Insurance Approved Plan Information is available at http://www.cms.hhs.gov/schip/stateplans/chiphi.asp?state=HI. Upcoming task force and state coalition meeting dates are on our web site at http://www.coveringkids.com/calendar/. 2. States to Cover Teens Eligible for Medicaid, CHIP Washington, 18 October (Reuters Health): Developing strategies to cover the 2.3 million adolescents eligible but not enrolled in Medicaid and state Children's Health Insurance Programs (CHIP) was a primary focus of the nation's Medicaid directors meeting Wednesday in Bethesda, Maryland. "Adolescents are almost an invisible group in this nation" regarding health care coverage," Dr. Marsha Lillie-Blanton, vice president in health policy for the Kaiser Family Foundation, told the National Association of State Medicaid Directors. While the health care needs of adolescents "tend to be of lower cost and preventive in nature," Lillie-Blanton said, "the challenge is reaching this invisible population" before unmet health needs become more chronic and long-term as teenagers reach adulthood. "The first priority is to enroll all kids eligible for Medicaid and CHIP," Timothy Westmoreland, director for the Health Care Financing Administration's (HCFA) center for Medicaid and state operations, told Reuters Health. HCFA oversees the state-run Medicaid programs, which insures America's poorest and most vulnerable citizens. "The question of serving and fully serving adolescents is one that is overlooked," Cindy Mann, director of HCFA's family and children's health program group, said. Medicaid traditionally has offered more generous benefits and eligibility criteria for younger children than for teenagers, although that has been changing in the last couple of years. As a result of these and other barriers confronting coverage of adolescence health care, Dr. Claire Brindis, executive director of the National Adolescent Health Information Center at the University of California, San Francisco, said, "Adolescents have the lowest utilization of health care services of any age group." 3. Get the Fall Edition of "Sign Them Up!" The Children's Defense Fund's Child Health Implementation Project has free copies of "Sign Them Up: A Quarterly Newsletter on Children's Health Insurance Programs" available. This edition of the newsletter focuses on comprehensive immigrant outreach through the building of community partnerships. Three-fourths of children in immigrant families are United States citizens, and are thereby eligible for the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) or Medicaid. More work needs to be done to inform and educate immigrant parents about the availability of health insurance for their children and alleviate any confusion, fear or cultural barriers that may be preventing immigrants from utilizing CHIP or Medicaid. The newsletter highlights several unique immigrant outreach approaches from the states of California, Illinois, New York, and Texas. Also included in the fall edition of "Sign Them Up": * Hot Off the Press: the latest on the Beneficiary Improvement and Protection Act of 2000 passed by the House Commerce Committee on September 26th, * National News on CHIP/Medicaid and Immigration Law: Clarifying the Confusion, * The latest Census Bureau data on who are the uninsured," and * Valuable web site resources on a wide range of immigration-related topics. Go to: Archive: Sign Them Up! Newsletters. 4. Children Eligible for Medicaid but Not Enrolled: How Great a Policy Concern? Medicaid-eligible uninsured children were almost three times as likely to have an unmet health care need during the year as Medicaid enrolled children and more than four times as likely to delay care due to cost according to the Urban Institute report. Almost one-quarter (23 percent) of these uninsured children lacked a regular source of care, compared with about 6 percent of the Medicaid-enrolled. http://www.urban.org/template.cfm?Template=/TaggedContent/ViewPublication.cfm&PublicationID=7389&NavMenuID=95 5. Pediatricians Take a Position on Mental Health Coverage The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released new guidelines (October 2000) on child and adolescent mental health and substance abuse services, calling for more comprehensive public and private insurance aimed at increasing access to treatment to address the needs of increasing numbers of children with psychosocial problems.