Seedco, a national nonprofit founded in 1987 that has been rooted in Tennessee since 2004, proposes to identify, educate, enroll and renew a total of 4,750 eligible West TN residents – 2,800 children, 1,200 parents and 750 pregnant individuals – into Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) under the HEALTHY KIDS 2022 Outreach and Enrollment Cooperative Agreements funding opportunity.
Seedco’s Connecting West Tennessee Kids to Coverage (CWTKC) is a $1,494,525 three-year program to increase enrollment and retention of Tennessee children in Medicaid and CHIP. Seedco will expand its target service area from the 2019 funding cycle to include two additional rural counties of Haywood and Fayette counties in Tennessee. These two rural counties will be served in addition to Shelby County (the largest county in West Tennessee) and Tipton counties. These contiguous regions with an estimated 40,000 uninsured children, will receive outreach and enrollment assistance via the proposed program.
The proposed service region spans nearly 1,800 square miles and is home to more than 40,000 uninsured children; this is more than twice the level of uninsured children in 2019. Seedco will be the lead agency of the collaborative, continuing with existing CWTKC partners and adding new partners based on the first three years of collaboration and enrollment work. CWTKC will target subgroups of TN children that experience lower-than-average health coverage rates, with a focus on a) children of young parents ages 18-24, b) Latino children, c) children living in rural areas, and d) pregnant individuals. TennCare, the state agency responsible for CHIP and Medicaid, has committed to continuing the existing data sharing agreement with Seedco to verify enrollment and retention data.
The proposed program will be implemented primarily by an Enrollment Assister team and a full-time Project Director, with supervision from the Director of Seedco’s Mid-South Region and additional oversight from the Seedco management team.
TennCare, the state agency responsible for the Medicaid and CHIP programs, currently has in place, a data sharing agreement to verify Seedco’s enrollment and retention data on the individuals assisted under this initiative. TennCare has indicated a continued/updated Data User Agreement for ongoing activities. Seedco will continue to partner with the following organizations and agencies to identify and reach the eligible uninsured children in its target area: Memphis-Shelby County Schools (the largest school district in West Tennessee); Tipton County Health Dept.; Children and Family Services; the City of Brownsville, TN (Haywood County); the City of Covington, TN (Tipton County) and the Jackson/Madison Regional Health Department.