August 23, 2010: SHARE has released a new issue brief about Iowa’s experience using income tax information to reach out to uninsured children who are potentially eligible for the state’s CHIP (“hawk-i”) and Medicaid programs. This outreach was mandated by Iowa’s 2008 comprehensive health reform legislation.
The new brief—“Reaching Uninsured Children: Iowa’s Income Tax return and CHIP Project”—details how the state’s Department of Revenue and Department of Human Services collaborated to implement the Iowa’s tax-based outreach efforts and offers multiple lessons learned from the state’s experience to date. These lessons include the importance of establishing inter-agency data-sharing agreements, ensuring that tax form questions about health insurance are as clear as possible, notifying professional tax preparers of changes to the tax form, and creating an automated mechanism to track outreach efforts. Link to a PDF of the brief.
This new brief is authored by Brenda Freshour-Johnston, Outreach Coordinator at Iowa Department of Human Services, and draws upon the content of her presentation during SHARE’s February 24th webinar, “Using Income Tax Information to Target Medicaid and CHIP Outreach.” Click here to watch a recording of the webinar or to download a podcast of the event.