Campaign Update
Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Inside This Issue:

1. Children's Health Coverage in the News: Kids at Risk of Losing Health Coverage
2. New Report Documents Positive Impact of Children's Health Initiatives: Covering All Children Critical to Health Reform

As the health care reform debate continues, there are real risks for thousands of children losing coverage in the meantime.

“Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared 2007 the ‘year of health care reform’ in California, but thousands of children could actually lose insurance coverage in the coming months…”

A recently-released study, Three Independent Evaluations of Healthy Kids Programs Find Dramatic Gains in Well-Being of Children and Families, finds that health insurance dramatically improves the health and well-being of children. The report, funded by the Packard Foundation and written by researchers from Mathematica, Urban Institute, and University of California, San Francisco, summarizes the evaluation results of three locally financed Healthy Kids health insurance programs in Los Angeles, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties. Together, these programs insure 60,000 children who are not currently eligible for Medi-Cal or Healthy Families. The report highlights the positive impact these health initiatives have on the lives of children, including improvements in their access to and use of health care and reductions in unmet health needs.

Wendy Lazarus of The Children’s Partnership provided a statement to the press, on behalf of Californians for Healthy Kids, in response to the release of the report, calling on California leaders to “apply the lessons from this new research and move, now, to insure all children.”

• Click here for press statement
• Click here for report

For more information, please contact Krystal Moreno Lee at klee@childrennow.org or 916-443-1680.

The 100% Campaign, a collaborative effort of The Children's Partnership, Children Now and Children's Defense Fund, was created to ensure that all of California's children obtain the health insurance they need to grow up strong and healthy.
www.100percentcampaign.org

The PICO California Project is the united effort of 20 California congregation-community organizations affiliated with the PICO National Network. Collectively, we represent 350 congregations and 400,000 families statewide and are actively organizing in over 70 cities in Northern and Southern California.
www.picocalifornia.org