Children in Alameda County under the age of eighteen
are twenty three percent of the population.
Unfortunately, twenty thousand children are uninsured in our county.
Thirteen thousand are eligible but not enrolled in Medi-Cal or CHIP,
what we call “Healthy Families” in California.
When we saw the “Connecting Kids to Coverage” initiative, we were
very, very excited. I saw the opportunity for our county to shine
and to do something that we really needed to do.
Our strategy around enrollment really focuses on ensuring that all children have
access to care. So we are very proud that we have twenty six federally qualified
school-based health centers spread throughout Alameda County
where children, insured or not, can receive care.
At United for Success Academy, the health care facility functions in various forms.
One is making sure that all of our students are vaccinated and their
vaccines are up to date. Additionally we do dental screenings.
Everybody was excited to be able to have that and say
“You actually have a clinic on site? That’s great.”
Take a deep breath in and out.
We want to use what is really a national model in bringing
health care to children to help us in the effort to enroll all children
who are eligible for “Healthy Families.”
So we go to where the kids are at,
and that’s been the secret to success in this county.
We rely on community-based organizations to deliver the vast majority of our
mandated services and that process has been part of our effort to combat the
challenges we face around being culturally congruent and relevant,
being one of the most diverse counties in the nation.
My job is to go to the clinics, to the hospitals, and to the community-based
organizations to process the applications for Medi-Cal and CalFresh programs.
The Vietnamese Community Development Corporation is one of our
partners in providing help and social services in Alameda County.
We also send county staff, to that site, to work directly with families
and staff at that site to enroll children and families who are eligible but not enrolled.
The feel safer if they come to their own community
and they know that someone is always there to understand their culture...to understand their language.
The best way of insuring children is to find them at school,
to find them at community centers, and not make it very difficult
to fill out the forms and to insure them.
We are working with our community-based organizations to give them access to
health information technology tools like one-e-app. One-e-app is a web-based
service that immediately enrolls and screens children and their families for
Medi-Cal and CHIP eligibility. It then prepopulates and application, and
forwards it to our social service agency who approves the Medi-Cal application.
We want the county to do well in the future, so the future is truly our
children. If they don’t have health insurance, we think the odds of
them doing well and succeeding is much lower.
We’re here willing to help and open our doors to making sure that
everyone has access to it.
Of the thirteen thousand children in Alameda County who are
currently eligible but not enrolled, our goal is to get every one of them
and we won’t be satisfied until we do.