Teacher Associations
Teachers know they cannot teach to an empty desk and students without health insurance miss more days of school per year than their insured peers. More days of school missed can result in lower academic achievement. It is important not only for student health, but also for the student’s education that they are enrolled in a health insurance program. There are many different no or low cost health insurance programs for which the students in your district could be eligible. You can learn more about all the programs.
Among all the professionals with whom parents interact, teachers are some of the most trusted and respected. The Teachers for Healthy Kids Health Outreach project leverages that relationship to promote the enrollment of children into no or low cost health insurance. Additionally, the THK Health Outreach program was designed with teachers in mind, making it easy to implement, and yielding significant positive results.
The role of the teacher association in this project can be as minimal as giving your approval for teachers to work on this project or as significant as initiating the process and being the driving force behind implementation.
However, before we would ask for your teachers’ participation, we ask that you learn more about the steps to implementing the project. Once a district is identified, which can be by someone within the district, a health plan partner, or THK, either by phone or in person THK will meet with district and teachers association staff to go over the importance of health insurance for students and the steps to the project. If the project is approved, schools are identified and the outreach process begins.
In order to ensure the safety of families, THK has worked closely with the Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board (MRMIB), the government body that oversees the Healthy Families Program, to develop and enforce a Memorandum of Understanding. Additionally, the health plan partners with whom THK works are under strict guidelines and regulations as stipulated by MRMIB, as a requirement for participating in the Healthy Families Program. The health plans are not allowed to steer families towards any particular health plan, especially not their own. However, they health plan partners are required to indicate for which health plan they work so that should there be a problem during the enrollment process, the offending health plan partner can be identified. Generally, the health plan partners will enroll the children in to whatever health plan their current medical, dental, or vision providers accept. Any problems are immediately reported to Teachers for Healthy Kids and MRMIB.
The following are the steps to the project:
- Each health plan is assigned to an equal number of schools of relatively equal size within the district (e.g. each health plan is assigned to two middle schools and one elementary school).
- The health plan partners meet with their assigned schools to discuss the program with the principal or other identified school staff, such as a school nurse or health coordinator. During this meeting, the health plan partner arranges a time to do a presentation at a regularly scheduled teachers’ meeting.
- The health plan partner, often with the school nurse or a district health staff member, gives a presentation to teachers explaining the importance of health insurance, describing the program, and providing the teachers with materials.
- Each teacher receives a teacher bag and envelope with a class set of surveys. See an example of our surveys.
- Teachers are shown the incentives students will receive if they return their surveys: stickers for students grades K through 3rd and calculators for students grades 4th through 6th. Middle school and high school students may be entered in a raffle to receive an appropriate prize, if the school approves.
- Teachers are also informed that the class with the highest rate of return will receive a sandwich party (or similar) and/or the teacher will receive a gift certificate to an office supply store.
- The teachers are asked to pass out the surveys to their students and collect them and place them in their original envelope within 10 days.
- The teacher sends the collected surveys to the school’s office where they are picked up by the health plan partner.
- The health plan partner provides the school and teachers with the incentives.
- The health plan partner or a community based organization calls and enrolls all interested children and families in no or low cost health insurance. If there are large numbers of interested families and the school approves, an enrollment event may be held at the school for the interested parents.
- The results of the project are reported back to the school and THK. THK will compile the results from all the schools and report the information to the district.
To see all the incentives and materials provided to teachers and schools, click here.
There are many ways in which this program can be modified to meet the needs of the schools from arranging enrollment events to foregoing teacher presentations to altering incentives. However, over the years of implementing health outreach projects, this has been the most effective way to promote the enrollment of children and their families in no or low cost health insurance.
Health plan partners are encouraged to continue their relationships with their assigned schools beyond the first outreach project. The partners are encouraged to attend back to school nights, open houses, health fairs, and to collect surveys throughout the year by working with the school office staff so new students entering the school and current students losing their insurance can be enrolled.
Additionally, as the project continues, if the health plan partners have trouble making contact in schools or identify a school in which they are interested in working, THK will establish contact with the school and help develop a relationship.
If you would like to get involved with our outreach projects, please contact us.