In 1997, just months before Congress enacted the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) announced a national grant program called “Covering Kids.” The concept was to overcome hurdles to Medicaid enrollment and retention through outreach, policy and procedural simplifications and coordination of coverage between programs. With the creation of CHIP, RWJF recognized the significant potential to enroll eligible children and eventually awarded Covering Kids grants in all states.

Three years later, RWJF broadened the initiative by launching “Covering Kids & Families.” Altogether the foundation invested $150 million dollars in technical assistance and direct financial support of coalitions in the states and hundreds of community-based projects. Today, many CKF coalitions continue this work; conducting outreach, working with state program administrators to remove barriers to coverage and providing a real life perspective on how well public coverage programs are meeting the needs of children and families.

CCF is pleased to serve as a technical and policy resource center to these coalitions as they continue their collaboration through the National Covering Kids & Families Network (NCKFN). With support from RWJF, CCF will provide federal policy research and analysis and facilitate information-sharing, networking, communications, collaboration and peer-to-peer learning among member organizations within the network.

A critical aspect of this new partnership is to identify, capture and promote key lessons learned, promising strategies and best practices in enrolling all eligible children and families in Medicaid, CHIP and other public health coverage programs. This insight will be invaluable as we design a consumer-friendly system of health coverage that includes expanded Medicaid coverage, maintenance of CHIP and new affordable options for individuals and small businesses to purchase subsidized insurance through insurance exchanges.

While creating an insurance exchange is new to nearly all states, the experience of Covering Kids & Families coalitions provide valuable lessons learned. Making information accessible, overcoming language and cultural barriers, providing community-based application assistance, streamlining policy and procedures, reducing paperwork and monitoring enrollment and retention through data collection, analysis and reporting are essential building blocks to the success of health reform.

For more information about the NCKF network, visit http://ccf.georgetown.edu/index/covering-kids-and-families