The fact that we can all be proud of achieving historically high rates of health coverage for children (90%) has been the result of a number of successful strategies: savvy advocacy capitalizing on the high value Americans place on children’s health to expand coverage; removal of the red-tape paperwork burden on families and eligibility offices by streamlining and simplifying enrollment and renewal; and last but not least outreach and enrollment assistance targeted to hard-to-reach groups.

The reauthorization of CHIP in 2009 provided $100 million dollars to support a national campaign and outreach grant program, which was launched as “Connecting Kids to Coverage” and provided two rounds of $40 million each in grants to states and community groups. The Affordable Care Act supplemented and extends the national campaign and grants with additional $40 million in funding. From this ACA resource, CMS will award a final round of $32 million in two-year grants, which were announced last week.
This round of grants will support outreach strategies in the following areas:

1.  Engaging schools in outreach, enrollment and retention activities;
2.  Bridging health coverage disparities by reaching out to subgroups of children that exhibit lower than average health coverage rates;
3. Designing and executing targeted enrollment strategies to streamline health coverage enrollment for individuals participating in SNAP, WIC or other public benefit programs;
4. Establishing and developing application assistance resources to provide high quality, reliable Medicaid/CHIP enrollment and renewal services in local communities; and
5. Conducting training programs to equip communities to help families understand the new application and enrollment system and to deliver effective assistance to families with children eligible for Medicaid and CHIP.

Proposals are due February 21, 2013. For the full solicitation, which includes instructions on how to apply, click here. For additional assistance on the program-related issues addressed in the solicitation, call 888-203-6161 or email info@grantreview.org.
Also, CMS is also hosting a teleconference for prospective applicants on:

January 16th: 2pm – 3pm ET
Dial In: 1-866-710-0179
Passcode: 568485