Covering Kids and Families in Northeast Oregon - Northeast Oregon Network (NEON) is proposing Covering Kids and Families in Northeast Oregon, a project with the overall goal of educating rural communities about health coverage options, engaging a widespread referral network to deepen our reach into isolated rural and frontier communities, enrolling children and families in Medicaid, and providing culturally responsive ongoing enrollment and retention assistance through the support of Community Health Workers (CHWs). This project will serve five rural and frontier counties in Northeast Oregon: Baker, Malheur, Umatilla, Union, and Wallowa. The area served by the proposed project covers over 21,000 square miles, nearly the size of West Virginia. Despite its large size, the area has only 3.8% of Oregon’s population, and residents of the area face unique barriers such as long travel times to medical services, cross-state challenges in accessing care, and lack of broadband or cell service in some areas to complete Medicaid enrollment or renewal online. Additional challenges including language barriers, food insecurity, and poverty are also present across the service area. The focus of the project will be on serving the most isolated and vulnerable outlying communities with in-person assistance across the service area, as well as providing language access for enrollment assistance in 4 languages other than English that are commonly spoken in Northeast Oregon. NEON will complete this work by engaging with traditional social service partners, local informal networks, community leaders and non-traditional care providers. These will include midwife and doula networks, small businesses, faith communities, school districts, and other partners serving children and families. NEON will provide onsite, comprehensive outreach and enrollment assistance to residents of communities that are often 4-6 hours drive away from specialty medical services. This project will result in the enrollment of at least 1,145 children, 890 parents, and 214 pregnant women in the Oregon Medicaid/CHIP program over the 5-year grant period. NEON will also assist with utilization of Medicaid benefits, including critical transportation service benefits, resulting in over 2,500 rides to medical services. NEON will ensure that families we work with are assigned to primary care and dental providers that are within a reasonable travel distance of their home, increasing access to care. This project will seek to form long-term relationships with families, becoming their go-to source of information and assistance when coverage challenges arise. NEON is requesting $2,754,047 over a 5-year grant period to support staff time, travel, supplies, language access contracts, case management software, and other critical project functions. NEON was the recipient of a prior Children’s Health Insurance Program Outreach and Enrollment grant soon after the organization was incorporated in 2009. While current staff were not involved with this project, our records indicate that the project was successful. This project was responsible for launching our long-term enrollment programming, and it has guided our approach to enrollment services throughout our history.
