Indiana Healthy Families Alliance - Indiana Rural Health Association (IRHA), as the applicant organization, intends to launch the Indiana Healthy Families Alliance (IHFA) for the purpose of improving health outcomes, reducing long-term healthcare costs, and enhancing health equity for Indiana’s most vulnerable families. Through targeted outreach and enrollment into the Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), IHFA aims to reduce the rate uninsured children, parents, and pregnant women in Indiana. IRHA has secured letters of commitment from five organizations to serve as subrecipients to create the IHFA. Alliance members include Goodwill of Michiana, Goodwill of Central and Southern Indiana, Greene County General Hospital, Valley Professionals Community Health Center, and WindRose Health Network. The overarching goal of the project is to connect with children and families to aid in enrollment and retention rates in Medicaid and CHIP so fewer children are uninsured. Project goals of the IHFA program include the following: 1) The Indiana Healthy Families Alliance program will complete 7,326 child applications; 6,226 new child enrollments, and 6,226 child renewals into Medicaid and/or CHIP; and 2)The IHFA program will complete 6,505 parent applications; 5,528 parent enrollments; 5,528 parent renewals; 3,047 pregnant women applications; and 2,590 pregnant women enrollments into Medicaid. Objectives and expected outcomes of the IHFA program are to design and implement outreach, education, application, enrollment and renewal activities that increase Medicaid awareness, streamline the application process, support Medicaid/CHIP child enrollments and renewals, and improve access to healthcare for the target population. These efforts will be analyzed by monitoring the impact of community partnerships, outreach events, marketing and educational campaigns, and by the number of applications, renewals, and enrollments completed successfully. IRHA respectfully requests a total budget amount of $2,963,760 for years 1 – 5 of the project performance period. These funds will be used to support efforts associated with the Indiana Healthy Families Alliance. Specifically, to reduce the number of children who are eligible for, but not enrolled in, Medicaid and/or CHIP and improve the retention of enrolled children. The funds will be allocated for: 1) staffing key personnel; 2) travel, in-state (outreach, community engagement, meetings with alliance partners, and enrollments) and out-of-state (to attend annual CMS meeting in Washington D.C.); 3) supplies for staff who work directly for the project; 4) marketing, promotional networking, rent and security costs, licensing/training costs, and communication expenses all directly related to the project; and 5) subrecipient/contractual obligations for five alliance member organizations to provide a 0.5 full-time equivalent certified Navigator from each organization, dedicated to supporting the IHFA program. IRHA is both a previous and current CKC grantee. Overall performance during the current grant period is as follows: child enrollment (44.2%), child renewal (59.9%), parent enrollment (101.8%), parent renewal (85.2%), and pregnant women enrollment (39.2%). Progress toward goals in Years 1 and 2 was impacted by the continuous enrollment mandate during the public health emergency and an increased number of ex parte renewals. However, Year 3 is trending positively toward goal attainment.
