Undoubtedly you’ve heard about Super Bowl XLVI , but have you heard of CHIP III which is also taking the field this weekend?

CHIP is short for the Children’s Health Insurance Program which was reauthorized three years ago this weekend. To mark the occasion, we’re hosting a Super Blog-Off between Patriots fans and Giants fans.  But here’s the kicker – they have to compete for kids. That’s right, we’ve taken HHS Secretary Sebelius’ “Connecting Kids to Coverage Challenge” quite literally and want the teams to compete based on how much they are doing to help uninsured children.

While we won’t likely reach over 110 million people or be able to sell ads for $3.5 million per thirty seconds, our goal is to help reach the 4.3 million uninsured children who are eligible for CHIP or Medicaid coverage but not yet insured.

Last year, the Pittsburgh Steelers won.  That’s right.  They might have lost the football game but they won our Super Blog-Off by going to great lengths to reach out to uninsured children.  Pittsburgh fans even swaddled newborn babies in “terrible towels” declaring that no baby should leave the hospital without an insurance card or a terrible towel.

This year, Dayanne Leal of Health Care for All Massachusetts is blogging on behalf of Patriot’s fans and a team of health policy experts and advocates from New York are taking the field for Giant’s fans. 

So whether you are a Pats’ fan, a Giants’ fan or wish there were a team from some place west of the Mississippi in the Super Bowl, you can bring home a victory for uninsured kids in your state by supporting efforts to enroll them in Medicaid or CHIP and keeping those programs strong. 

To vote for your favorite team, go to the Patriot’s blog or the Giant’s blog and post a comment.  Include the words “Go Patriots” or “Go Giants” in the text.

May the best (outreach) team win.