Schools
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Medicaid Supports Student Success in School Districts Across the Country
By: Aubrianna Osorio, Emma Ford, Anne Dwyer, and Margaux Johnson-Green Research consistently shows that Medicaid coverage in childhood has long-term benefits, including supporting student success. New data on the share of children with Medicaid/CHIP coverage are now available for more than 7,000 school districts nationwide and show how important these coverage programs are to students across…
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Exploring CMS’ Medicaid School-Based Services Technical Assistance Center
As a part of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the U.S. Department of Education (ED) were directed to develop a technical assistance center (TAC) to assist and expand the capacity of state Medicaid and education agencies, local education agencies, and school districts to deliver school-based services…
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CMS Releases Updated Medicaid & CHIP Telehealth Toolkit, Includes State Best Practices and Behavioral Health Strategies
This month, CMS released an updated State Medicaid and CHIP Telehealth Toolkit consolidating information from previous toolkits and providing additional guidance – as required by the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act – on issues from billing best practices to strategies for using telehealth in schools. In addition to FAQs on issues such as benefit flexibility, financing,…
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CMS Announces $50 Million in Capacity Building Grants for Medicaid/CHIP School-Based Health Services
This week, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced a Notice of Funding Opportunity for the much anticipated planning grants to implement or expand school-based health services for children enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP. As we’ve written about in previous blogs, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act appropriated $50 million in grants for states…
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A Tipping Point for School Medicaid Expansion
By Jessie Mandle, National Program Director of the Healthy Schools Campaign Since 2014, school districts have been allowed to bill Medicaid for all health services provided to all Medicaid-enrolled students, instead of being limited to reimbursement for services included in a student’s Individualized Education Plan (IEP). However, states have been slow to leverage this opportunity…
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It’s Here! An Introduction to the Much-Anticipated Updated School-Based Medicaid Services and Administrative Claiming Guide
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and last week’s news takes this month to heart with the release of the much-awaited Comprehensive Guide to Medicaid Services and Administrative Claiming by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in consultation with the US Department of Education (ED). The first comprehensive update in two decades, CMS’s…
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Child Medicaid/CHIP Coverage by School District Now Available
[Editor’s Note: These maps were updated on August 3, 2023. See here for updated data.] As we’ve written before, Medicaid is an essential tools for supporting schools in improving children’s health, especially mental health. Research has shown that Medicaid coverage can help boost children’s school readiness and reduce absenteeism, as well as improve high school…
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Webinar Series: School Medicaid Matters 2023
Over the next couple of months, CCF will be collaborating with the Healthy Schools Campaign and Community Catalyst to host a series of webinars focused on opportunities to strengthen the role of Medicaid in schools. The series kicked off earlier this month with a webinar featuring former CMS Administrator Vikki Wacchino, who walked through what…
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New Report Highlights Role Medicaid Can Play in Advancing Comprehensive School Mental Health Services
Last month, the Healthy Schools Campaign and Mental Health America released a new report titled, “State Policy Opportunities: Advancing Comprehensive School Mental Health Systems to Support Students”, which provides a new perspective on the key actors that can play a role in advancing comprehensive school mental health systems for students. But what counts as a…
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CMS Preps for Upcoming School Year with New Guidance on Leveraging Medicaid to Support School-Based Services
As summer is nearing its end, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is getting a jump on the new school year with a series of announcements aimed at improving children’s physical and mental health. As our colleague Kelly Whitener previewed last week, CMS released a number of Informational Bulletins (CIBs), including two related…
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Children’s Health and Well-Being Get Much Needed Attention from CMS this Week
CMS made three big announcements yesterday, drawing attention to ways Medicaid and CHIP can support children’s health and well-being. The first two announcements are sub-regulatory guidance documents, essentially bringing together all of the existing state options and best practices on behavioral health and school-based health. Sub-regulatory guidance doesn’t include new policy, but rather aims to…
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Bipartisan Safer Communities Act Greenlights Updated School-Based Medicaid Guidance, TA Center and Grant Funding
On June 25, President Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act into law. While a high-level overview of the legislation has previously been detailed on SayAhhh!, with the language now enacted into law, we thought it would be helpful to drill down into more detail on the provisions relating to Medicaid and CHIP and school-based…
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How Medicaid Can Help Schools Sustain Support for Students’ Mental Health
Among the Covid-19 pandemic’s most pernicious aftershocks is its impact on student mental health. Isolated at home, disconnected from friends, and suffering trauma from family members’ job losses or Covid-related deaths, students are experiencing high levels of anxiety and depression. About 44 percent of adolescents experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness during the pandemic compared to…
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HHS Kicks off Mental Health Awareness Month with New Fact Sheet and a $25 Million Investment in School-Based Health Centers
Last week, HHS announced that they have awarded nearly $25 million to Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)-funded health centers that deliver services at school-based sites in underserved communities. These awards build upon the $5 million that HRSA distributed to new and existing school-based service sites in September 2021. Similar to last year’s round of…
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School-Based Health Care: One Answer to Ohio Children’s Unmet Health Care Needs
By Kelly Vyzral, Senior Health Policy Associate, Children’s Defense Fund Ohio February is School-Based Health Care Awareness Month. This is a great opportunity to talk about improving access to health care for Ohio’s children. All children deserve to grow up healthy with the opportunity to thrive into adulthood. But the reality is that in many…
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Surgeon General Issues Advisory on Youth Mental Health Crisis, Highlights Importance of Medicaid and CHIP Coverage and Calls for More Action
This week, the U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued an Advisory highlighting the urgent need to address the nation’s youth mental health crisis. As discussed here on Say Ahhh!, the pandemic has taken an unprecedented toll on the mental health and wellbeing of children, exacerbating long standing gaps in mental health care for children…
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New Report Highlights How COVID-Relief Funds Can Be Used To Strengthen and Expand Medicaid School Programs and Address Student Mental Health Needs
As the last few weeks of summer come to an end, families and school districts are preparing for the return of students to the classroom. After a year and a half of living and (largely virtual) schooling during an unprecedented pandemic, the start of this school year can serve as a prime opportunity for school…
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Once Upon a Time in North Carolina: CHIP Health Services Initiative Funds Early Literacy Promotion as Part of Well-Child Care
by Emma Sandoe, Anna Miller-Fitzwater, Donna Cohen Ross Once Upon a Time So many well-loved stories of early childhood begin with the words “once upon a time” and go on to tell fairy tales of fantastic adventure. Here in North Carolina, we are excited to share our own early childhood story—one that is certainly adventurous and promises…
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National Strategy Needed to Close Health Care Gaps, Protect Children’s Health and Well-Being
New research from the Urban Institute, “Urgent Action Needed to Address Children’s Unmet Health Care Needs during the Pandemic,” identifies the problems families with children are facing and some proven solutions, but explains that without a coordinated, national response, it’s unlikely that the children most at risk will get needed supports. Instead, as the authors…
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As Families Grapple with Schooling Stresses, Congress Must Act
Community Catalyst By: Eva Marie Stahl The Senate is on vacation until next week, having left Washington last month without delivering on the needed support that states and localities urgently require to support families and working people across the country who are living on the edge of financial and health disaster… In a recent survey,…
