This issue brief details the collaborative effort between Iowa's Department of Revenue and Department of Human Services to use tax information to reach out to uninsured children who are potentially eligible for the state’s CHIP (“hawk-i”) and Medicaid programs. The brief offers several lessons learned from Iowa's experience, including 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.

This brief is authored by Brenda Freshour-Johnston, Outreach Coordinator at Iowa Department of Human Services, and draws upon the content of her presentation from SHARE’s February 24, 2010, 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.