- Early success makes finding uninsured children tougher, By Phil Galewitz, June 16, 2010, USA Today: “For 55-year-old Hilda Johnson, who cares for her two young grandsons, the ‘Walkers/Talkers’ program was a godsend. Johnson, who is disabled, didn’t know how to get insurance coverage for Bryce, 3, and Brian, 4. Then last year, someone from Kingsley House, a non-profit agency that runs Walkers/Talkers, came to her house and helped her enroll the boys in Medicaid, the state-federal program for the poor. ‘They were more than helpful in doing all the paperwork,’ she said. ‘Without this, I wouldn’t have known what to do.’ The program, which was started more than a decade ago, is one of the most aggressive efforts in the nation to reach children who are eligible but not enrolled in government health insurance programs – Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). The Walkers/Talkers program sends workers into the poorest neighborhoods to knock on doors in search of uninsured children and then helps parents sign them up…”
- Young canvassers part of nationwide health care drive, By Phil Galewitz, June 15, 2010, USA Today: “On a cool weekday afternoon, a small group of young adults gathers outside Covenant House, a homeless shelter where some of them live or go to school. Armed with clipboards, they jump into a van and head out to search for their target: uninsured children. For the next three hours, the group of 20-somethings, called ‘door knockers,’ canvass a lower-income neighborhood looking for children who are eligible for two government programs: Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). ‘We’re in the neighborhood to sign up kids for free health care,’ says Maurice Raspberry, 21, who lives at the shelter. Tami Wright, also 21, answers the door at her grandmother’s house. Her children, ages 1 and 3, are uninsured because she didn’t know how to renew their coverage through Medicaid, the state-federal health program for the poor. ‘I don’t work and I don’t have a car to get to the welfare office,’ says Wright, who is uninsured…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty