Mission
CCHI’s mission is to improve the health and well-being of California children and families by supporting its members in meeting the needs of their communities.
Who We Are & What We Do
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CCHI is a statewide association of community-based, culturally competent outreach and enrollment organizations that help children and families to gain access to, use, and maintain affordable health coverage and health care.
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We work with organizations throughout California that support and coordinate consumer assistance networks of independent enrollment organizations in their region. CCHI also mobilizes stakeholders to leverage the expertise and capacity of every concerned voice in making recent health care reforms a continued reality for all residents.
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CCHI is a leader in health advocacy for children and families and is widely recognized as a statewide network that champions enrollment and retention in health coverage, access to health care and other services that assist individuals and families to survive and thrive.
History
The Children’s Health Initiative (CHI) movement began in 2001 with the establishment of Santa Clara County’s CHI. This initiative created a countywide organizational structure to provide low-cost health insurance to all children. Coverage was provided, regardless of immigration status, for children up to 300% federal poverty level (FPL) through an proactive campaign to enroll children into public programs and raise funds to pay families’ premiums for a local coverage product: Healthy Kids. Healthy Kids predominantly covered children who were not eligible for the public programs.
The establishment of the Santa Clara CHI set the stage for other counties to create their own Children’s Health Initiatives, and San Francisco, San Mateo, and Los Angeles counties soon set up their own outreach, enrollment, enrollment and retention systems.
Soon there were 28 Children’s Health Initiatives operating in 30 counties, and 21 of the 28 initiatives sought funding and provided a Healthy Kids product. Several others provided access to the California Kids product. All the CHIs engaged in enrollment campaigns to maximize the number of eligible children enrolled in some kind of affordable health insurance.
CCHI was created in 2007 to provide the local health outreach and enrollment organizations with a plethora of technical support [MH2] services and constantly updated information. Our principal function is to enhance the capacity of our member organizations, which employ a cadre of health assisters, so that they can better and more efficiently serve their local communities.
In 2014, we expanded our target populations to include adults, primarily parents and caregivers, as well as children. As we progress towards universal health coverage, California’s diverse population continues to require a mix of consumer assistance supports to help them resolve barriers to confusing and complex health coverage enrollment and renewal processes.
