Public health and Medicaid agencies across all 50 states, DC, and the territories play an integral role in supporting stable families, particularly through programs like Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which provide care to nearly 38 million children. These programs promote economic mobility, reduce poverty, and improve health outcomes. Through effective partnerships, Medicaid directors and state and territorial health officials can optimize the impact of federal and state investments, ensuring children grow up healthy. Collaborative efforts, as highlighted in Public Health Agency Approaches to Improving Access to Care, are essential in maximizing the value of these investments.
Examples of operationalizing collaboration. Public health and Medicaid can operationalize their partnership in several impactful ways. Below are four key examples that directly improve the health and well-being of children.
- Create an innovation-to-implementation pipeline: State and territorial public health agencies serve as incubators within the US healthcare system, creating and testing new ideas that can enhance not only population health but also care delivery and payment mechanisms in the larger system. A prime example is the work of community health workers (CHWs), whose roles have been supported and developed by public health agencies and advocates for years. Public health programs built evidence for CHWs by promoting and integrating them as “frontline” workers with deep community knowledge, strategically aimed at improving health access, literacy, and overall outcomes, especially in Medicaid-served populations. Leveraging this evidence, Medicaid programs sustained this innovation by developing reimbursement models for CHW services and integrating these workforce extenders as “billable providers” into the broader healthcare system for children and families. This partnership fosters an innovation-to-implementation pipeline that supports strong and stable families and leads to more efficient and effective government programs over time.
- Identify and address rural health access issues and workforce shortages: Medicaid and public health agencies are collaborating to respond to the increasing number of women of reproductive age living in maternity care deserts. By utilizing public health surveillance data, health provider shortage area data, loan repayment programs, and Medicaid’s provider enrollment and utilization data, Medicaid and public health agencies gain a deeper understanding of the perinatal care gaps in rural communities. Once gaps are identified, Medicaid and public health leaders are taking action to respond together. For example, Medicaid and public health agencies are expanding access to maternal health services through telehealth, exploring opportunities to broaden providers’ scope of practice to increase the maternity care workforce, and leveraging workforce extenders like doulas.
- Make funding work together to achieve maximum effect: Medicaid and public health agencies are braiding financial and operational assets to support strong and healthy families through school-based health—particularly youth mental health services. Public health agencies can build the capacity and infrastructure that schools need to deliver mental health care to children. Medicaid can then sustain these new services and ensure children covered by Medicaid can access mental health services while they are at school. When these agencies align initiatives toward a common goal, they maximize Medicaid’s role of ensuring children have access to high-quality, affordable on-site mental health care through school nurses, and school mental health providers, and public health’s community facing programs like local mental health liaisons for teachers. Aligning public health with Medicaid strengthens efforts to implement and scale innovative solutions for youth mental health, particularly in areas where there may be gaps in crisis services.
- Modernize data infrastructure, IT systems, and braid data: Medicaid and public health leaders are also working together to advance child health through the power of interoperable data, modernized IT systems, and connected data. Public health data, such as registries, help Medicaid and its contracted health plans identify gaps in care and proactively respond when children and families are not getting the care they need. Braided data gives Medicaid a better picture of the care children are—or are not—receiving. Braiding Medicaid and public health data can also impact child health outcomes. For example, Medicaid programs can use behavioral health claims data alongside Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data to understand and address adverse childhood experiences. Finally, modernized IT systems that link Medicaid and public health are streamlining the consumer experience and preventing disease. These systems allow families to connect to Medicaid and other supports, like nutrition assistance, through a single door.
Read the Article in the March Issue of JPHMP
NAMD’s and ASTHO’s commitment to support our members in this work
The National Association of Medicaid Directors (NAMD), in collaboration with the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO), launched the National Committee for Sustainable Medicaid and Public Health Partnerships. The Committee is comprised of Medicaid directors and state public health officials who represent the diverse array of state contexts and experiences. The Committee will guide NAMD’s and ASTHO’s efforts to:
- Help all 56 states and territories embed and routinize Medicaid and public health partnership into agency operations.
- Surface opportunities for the federal government to facilitate Medicaid and public health partnership.
The strategies aim to create lasting change that goes beyond leadership transitions, timebound projects, or specific priorities. By working together and addressing upstream challenges, as recommended in Public Health Agency Approaches to Improving Access to Care, Medicaid and public health will continue to improve the health and well-being of communities, helping to support strong and stable families across the nation.
