Our colleagues at the California Pan Ethnic Health Network have just released a report that highlights the importance of health equity work to ensure that those eligible for new coverage under health reform are successfully enrolled. CPEHN’s new report, Achieving Equity by Building a Bridge from Eligible to Enrolled, shows that the California Health Benefit Exchange can greatly benefit communities of color – and projects some potential challenges these communities will face when trying to enroll.
Developed in partnership with the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education, the brief finds that approximately 1.7 million people eligible for tax credits in the Exchange will be from communities of color, and over 1 million nonelderly adults will speak English less than very well. Among them, a projected 100,000 Californians do not speak English well and could be deterred from enrolling in the Health Benefit Exchange without culturally and linguistically appropriate outreach and enrollment efforts. The report provides policy recommendations to help reduce these language barriers and ensure that all those eligible for coverage will enroll.
This report is a good reminder about the grave importance of building in consumer focused mechanisms such as language access as we create new systems and programs, in order to ensure the success of the Exchange and other reforms.
You can access the full report here: http://www.cpehn.org/pdfs/EligibletoEnrolledBrief.pdf