This report, co-authored by Mathematica Policy Research and the Urban Institute, reviews findings from the congressionally mandated evaluation funded by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE). The study focused on State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) programs in ten States around the country by drawing on case studies and surveys of SCHIP recipients.

This report is an evaluation of grantees receiving the State Covering Kids and Families (CKF) grant. This grant sought to make State Medicaid and SCHIP policies and procedures more user-friendly for low-income families, including eligibility, retention, enrollment and coordination. This article reviews the policy changes that resulted from grants in the eyes of the State officials.

The Santa Clara County Children's Health Initiative (CHI) is an outreach program to expand children's health insurance. The goal of the effort is to make certain that children enroll for all the programs that they are eligible. Overall, parents consistently reported positive feedback about the application process and outreach efforts.

The National Assembly's Family Strengthening Policy Center released this brief on the role that community health workers can play with helping families manage health. Community health workers are trained paraprofessionals who serve as health and human service resource persons in their communities. The brief includes recommendations to help these people become an effective component of health and human services and serving low-income families.

One out of five uninsured American is a child, which equates to 9 million uninsured children in the United States. This report, from the Children's Health Campaign, examines the demographics of uninsured children and consequences for these children for the future.

In the past 10 years, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and State Medicaid programs have increased the number of insured children. However, almost 9 million children remain uninsured -- 6 million are low-income children who are eligible for coverage but not enrolled. This article reviews the research and provides information on the benefits of health insurance for children.

This article, from the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, reviews the evidence relating to health insurance with the prevalence of uninsured Americans, which reached 46.1 million in 2005. Due to the high costs of private insurance, many low-income families cannot afford health insurance. The following report reviews the policy debate on health insurance coverage for the low-income population.

While the poverty rate has increased in the United States since 2000, this study examined the depth of poverty experienced. Severe poverty can have significant public health concern, and between 2000 and 2004, severe poverty increased dramatically. Health effects include chronic illnesses, more frequent and acute disease complications, and increased costs for health services.

Authored by Lynne Fender and Jen Bernstein. This Urban Institute report was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. This study describes policies and practices in Connecticut, Minnesota, and Texas designed to coordinate the child support enforcement program, Medicaid, and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to secure and sustain appropriate health care coverage for child support-eligible children. Based on site visits to the 3 States, the report documents both successes in cross-program coordination as well as challenges to effective coordination.

This paper considers four programs--Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), food stamps, child care subsidies, and the earned income tax credit (EITC)--that form the core work support system in the United States. It highlights differences in program funding, eligibility, and delivery systems. It describes trends in participation and synthesizes research knowledge about the observed differences in program participation. The paper concludes that these programs do not form an effective system. Each program operates under different rules that many low-income working families find daunting. A few recent state innovations offer potential for improving the system.