Children With Greatest Health Care Needs See Improvement Under Healthy Families
Children enrolled in Healthy Families have "improved health and do better in school," according to the first-year results of new study released yesterday, the AP/Contra Costa Times reports. For the "Health Status Assessment Project," University of California-San Diego and Children's Hospital of San Diego researchers surveyed approximately 6,000 families, asking them to "rate their experience" since enrolling their children in the program a year ago. Researchers found a 25% improvement in health for children who "started the program with the poorest health," according to the AP/Times (Chu, AP/Contra Costa Times, 11/21). The study also found that children who had the greatest health care needs at the time of enrollment after one year showed improvements in their health similar to chronically ill children who received excellent health care, were absent fewer days from school, "dramatically" improved their ability to pay attention in school and had fewer problems "accessing and utilizing health care services," according to the Office of the Governor (Office of the Governor release, 11/20). Alice Trujillo, spokesperson for the Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board, said the study is intended to "find out where our children were" in terms of health because "we had no projection of where they should be or would be" (AP/Contra Costa Times, 11/21). Gov. Gray Davis (D) said, "These findings demonstrate that Healthy Families has a tremendous impact on the quality of life among children with the greatest health care needs" (Office of the Governor release, 11/20). The project will continue to track health outcomes of children enrolled Healthy Families a year ago for two more years (AP/Contra Costa Times, 11/21).
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