SHADAC Staff

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Uninsured Profiles: New Resource from SHADAC Aims to Identify and Characterize Communities of Minnesota’s Uninsured Population

Over the past year, Dr. Kathleen Call and her research team at SHADAC have worked to build, refine, and now, publish, an interactive tool that allows users to better understand and define the uninsured population in Minnesota at the zip-code level. Partnering with the Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation of Minnesota, who provided funding for the project, and with essential guidance from the advisory board of MNsure navigators and policymakers, this newly available resource consists of two cooperative components meant to be used concurrently with one another: a downloadable and interactive Excel spreadsheet tool, and an interactive Minnesota map. 

Both components provide rates and counts of the uninsured in Minnesota at the ZIP code level (i.e., Census-defined ZIP code), compare characteristics of the total population to the uninsured population in that ZIP code, and provide an in-depth profile of the community characteristics. The map also shows the location of each ZIP code in relation to schools, hospitals, native reservations, and other important or distinctive landmarks.

The profile was designed as a way to support targeted outreach and enrollment activities of health insurance navigators and provide a way to identify and characterize hotspot communities with high uninsurance rates for policymakers as they develop strategies to reach the remaining uninsured in the state of Minnesota.

For additional information on the uninsured profile tool, or to request the development of a similar tool for another state (which Dr. Call and her team hope to do in the future), readers can access the Uninsured Profile resource webpage to download the tool in Excel spreadsheet format, utilize and view the interactive map, and provide feedback on their user experience.