Outreach and Educational Grants for Health Insurance Exchange, Covered California

Covered California, the state’s health insurance exchange created under the Affordable Care Act, conducted another webinar meeting to discuss new and revised outreach and educational grant proposals for California’s new individual, family and small group health insurance exchange.

California’s diversity creates challenges

Central to the success of Covered California in enrolling an estimated 5 million uninsured residents, half of which will qualify for low-income subsidies, is a robust educational and outreach program. Because of the diversity in geography, communities, ethnicity and languages, Covered California is hoping to receive grant proposals that will target a variety of the state’s population. The grant proposal process will be looking for a spectrum of non-profit and government agencies that can network with other local and regional groups such as unions, trade associates, faith-based institutions, healthcare centers and service organizations.

Download my outline of Outreach and Educational activities -> [download id=”34″]

County approach

The grants will cover a two-year period starting in April of 2013 with $40 million allocated toward individual and family enrollment and $3 million to target small businesses for the Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP). They are breaking the grant funding into pools to most effectively target the populations: Single and Multi-County Pool at $25 million, Statewide Pool, not defined by geography, $15 million and the SHOP Pool of $3 million. Currently, the grants will range in size from $250,000 to $1 million. Because the grants will have an included measurement of “population targeted”, counties and smaller target populations of less than 5,000 potential members will be encouraged to participate with multi-county initiatives and coalitions.

In depth discussions stressed

Covered California would like to see 70% of the allocated funding be directed toward one on one and small group in depth discussion about the program. This would include presentations at town hall meetings, service organization, trade groups, cultural organizations, schools, etc. The remaining 30% of the grant money would be allocated to raising awareness about the impending mandate, opportunities for affordable and subsidized health insurance through the exchange, and upcoming educational events where people can ask more questions.

Grants, Approvals, Workshops all cooking at once

Covered California staff will be taking the revised outreach and educational grant program to the Board for approval on January 17th, 2013. They hope to have the first release of Request for Grant Applications by January 22nd with funding in early March. Concurrently, they are working on a training module or workshop to get the entire outreach and education grant staff prepared to start spreading the word once the specific proposals are funded. It is estimated that they will have a second round of grant funding for outreach and educational programs in late May.

California leading the pack

Compared to other states, California is way ahead of the curve for implementation of not only the health insurance exchange, but outreach and education as well. Their plans are ambitious, but they are matched by the unique diversity of California’s population and their desire to create a well run state health insurance exchange. Covered California is shaping up to be a model for other states to emulate.

Here are some general marketing materials I created for the mythical People First Health Exchange. They are not meant to be representative of any state, but a template for non-profits to build outreach and educational material around.

[download id=”45″]             [download id=”46″]