Well into its second successful year, the CTA Teachers for Healthy Kids program is making a big difference in the effort to enroll children in free or low-cost health insurance programs.
Approximately 1.1 million California children eligible for public health insurance are not yet enrolled, and involved educators like Linda Young in Fontana are tackling the problem head on.
As vice president of the 2,000-member Fontana Teachers Association in San Bernardino County, Young is helping to organize the community and its schools around health care. She coordinated information booths at an outdoor market and shared data with the CTA chapter's site representative council in November. As word of her efforts spread, cadets from the local Reserve Officer Training Corps volunteered to go door-to-door with brochures about the state's health insurance options.
"We don't want to miss anybody," says Young, who teaches at the high school level. "Our desks might as well be empty if students don't feel well. If they don't feel well - if they can't see or if they can't hear - then they can't learn."
Launched in September 2002, the multiyear Teachers for Healthy Kids project is a partnership between CTA and the California Association of Health Plans (CAHP), representing about 30 health plans in the state. The California Endowment, a statewide foundation, gave CTA a $547,000 grant in 2002 to get the Teachers for Healthy Kids project off the ground and has now approved a $600,000 grant to expand the project.
The goal is for teachers to be an information resource for parents about California's low-cost Healthy Families Program, which provides state-funded coverage for children under age 19 via contracts with private health plans, and free coverage to qualified parents and children under Medi-Cal for Families.
"We certainly have made more teachers aware of this insurance," says Orange County educator Lloyd Porter, a member of the CTA Board of Directors and co-chair - with Blue Cross Senior Vice President John Monahan - of the large and very active Teachers for Healthy Kids steering committee.
"We really want to institutionalize Teachers for Healthy Kids," says Porter. "We want to eventually make this effort just a natural part of CTA and of the work that chapters do."
The strategy is working. When the project began, teachers had minimal awareness of the state's Healthy Families Program. Recent polling data shows 53 percent of CTA members are now aware of the program, 54 percent want to receive more information, and 81 percent feel the project should be a priority for CTA.
In parent-teacher conferences, as well as through posters and brochures, teachers are letting parents know about the toll-free Healthy Families Program phone number: (800) 880-5305.
Given today's expensive health care costs, the program is a bargain: It provides health coverage for only $4-$9 per month per child, up to a maximum of $27 per month. For example, a family of four with an income as high as $46,000 per year could be eligible.
Under Medi-Cal for Families, health coverage would be free for families at or below the federal income poverty level of about $18,000 per year.
More information is available on the CTA website [www.cta.org], click on Teachers for Healthy Kids.
CTA's Community Outreach Department is working to mobilize teachers because, as CTA President Barbara E. Kerr puts it, "This project is community organizing at its very best. Our students deserve a healthy chance to learn. This partnership between teachers and health plans is giving them that chance."
"The Teachers for Healthy Kids project is successful because teachers know how critical it is that students have health care and come to school ready to learn," adds Kerr.
Thanks to outreach work by Kerr, the League of Cities has resolved to work with CTA and the health plans to promote the program.
In an article scheduled to appear in the December issue of the League of Cities newsletter, Kerr calls on cities statewide to join teachers in the effort. The article is a joint effort between Kerr, Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn, CAHP President Steve Tough and Dr. Robert K. Ross, president and CEO of The California Endowment foundation.
The article says cities across California have "a rare opportunity to help hundreds of thousands of uninsured children get the health care they need without committing new city funds."
Month by month, county by county, teachers and health plans are getting Healthy Families and Medi-Cal insurance information into school districts and into the hands of parents, says CTA Vice President David A. Sanchez, who is now the association's liaison to the project.
Teachers in Los Angeles sent 750,000 forms home to parents to poll them about their health coverage needs. United Teachers Los Angeles President John Perez sent a recorded phone message to 40,000 members urging them to make sure students returned the forms. The completed forms are forwarded to the health plans and other community organizations that will work with families to complete the enrollment process.
Since March 31, the Teachers for Healthy Kids staff have given presentations at a dozen CTA Service Center Council meetings. Classroom posters, one in English and one in Spanish, were mailed to 220,000 CTA members, and 600,000 brochures were printed for parent use. About 500,000 fliers in nine languages have gone out to teachers and parents statewide.
Since spring, project staff have organized outreach events or presentations at schools in San Diego, Rialto, Fontana, Santa Ana, Garden Grove, Visalia, Porterville, El Monte, Tracy, San Jose, Sacramento, the Coachella Valley and other areas.
The level of poverty in the Coachella Valley means more students are uninsured and that outreach is vitally needed, says Mike Rosenfeld, president of the 800-member Coachella Valley Teachers Association in Riverside County.
"We have a critical need here. In some of our schools, 80 percent of our families are uninsured," Rosenfeld says. "Teachers are very positive about this project. They say this is something their students really need."
Rosenfeld, who brought the project to the attention of the chapter's site representative council, says teachers will be sending out health care questionnaires to thousands of families in December. Classes with 100 percent return rates will get free pizza or ice cream parties.
Similar incentives have paid off in other school districts.
In San Joaquin County, which also has many low-income students, about 11,000 children would qualify for Healthy Families or Medi-Cal health insurance. After health plan representatives met with teachers, they approached the Tracy Unified school board for official support in October and got it, says Ann Mooney, president of the 812-member Tracy Educators Association.
"Teachers are becoming more familiar with Healthy Families and want to get the word out," says Mooney.
Teachers for Healthy Kids staff will hold luncheons with Tracy teachers at four elementary schools in January and February, and health forms will go out to hundreds of parents. Classes returning 100 percent of the forms will get free pizza party.
Outreach is already working well in the Alum Rock Union Elementary School District in San Jose, where the Teachers for Healthy Kids project is being coupled with the state's Express Lane Eligibility program for free or reduced-price lunches. Parents can apply for public health insurance at the same time they enroll their children for the meal program. An estimated 76 percent of students in Alum Rock qualify for the lunch program.
Margaret Wolford, a kindergarten teacher at Arbuckle Elementary School, is proud that all of her students returned the health form. She's active in the Alum Rock Educators Association's efforts to secure health care for all students.
"I really think this is such an important project," she says. "I really am trying to help push it. Everybody needs health coverage."
Mike Myslinski
