Covering Kids & Families Evaluation: Lasting Legacies of Covering Kids & Families: Medicaid and SCHIP Officials in 46 States Share Their Perspectives in the 2008 Follow-Up Telephone Survey

Publication Date: January 2009

Publisher: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; Health Management Associates

Author(s): Eileen. Ellis; Lisa. Duchon

Research Area: Health

Type: Report

Abstract:

The Covering Kids & Families (CKF) initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation had two goals: to reduce the number of uninsured children and adults eligible for Medicaid or SCHIP programs who remain uninsured, and to build the knowledge, experience and capacity necessary to sustain the enrollment, and retention, of children and adults on those programs after the CKF program ended (Grant and Ravenell, 2002). As a condition of funding, RWJF required grantees in its CKF program to include state Medicaid and SCHIP officials in their coalitions, so that grantees might develop relationships with state officials that would lead to increases in Medicaid and SCHIP enrollment and policies that made it easier to access these programs.

The evaluation has focused on assessing the strategies, effectiveness and sustainability of CKF. In May and June of 2008 Health Management Associates (HMA) conducted a telephone survey with 59 Medicaid and SCHIP officials in all 46 states in which there were CKF grantees. The 2008 survey was designed to learn to what extent the changes made from the follow-up interviews in 2006-2007 were still in effect or had been reversed, and whether any changes previously reversed had been restored.

Nearly three-quarters of policy and procedural changes that CKF influenced in Medicaid and SCHIP programs since January 2002 were in effect in 2008 and about 90 percent of those were expected to remain so, according to state officials. The results suggest that CKF’s involvement with Medicaid and SCHIP programs may have been most productive in supporting procedural changes compared with policy changes.