Physical Health

Ensuring children are born healthy and stay healthy is a top priority for the Commission. First 5 Yolo determined that access to affordable, comprehensive health insurance is the necessary foundation to ensure children receive the healthcare services they need. Physical health as a priority area includes ensuring all children have a medical home and utilize preventive health services; have access to timely and adequate dental care; and eat well and exercise.

Yolo County Children’s Alliance, Children’s Health Initiative (CHI)
The Children’s Health Initiative (CHI) is a public/private partnership with the vision of ensuring that all children in Yolo County have comprehensive health insurance, including mental and dental services, and have access to quality healthcare. The CHI is a collaborative project of First 5 Yolo and the Yolo County Children’s Alliance (YCCA). First 5 Yolo funds YCCA to provide outreach, enrollment, utilization and retention assistance to families so that children who are eligible for subsidized health insurance programs are enrolled. The contract funds a portion of the countywide outreach coordinator as well as two certified application assistors who locate families with eligible children, and help them enroll in a variety of health insurance programs such as Medi-Cal, Healthy Families, Kaiser Child Health Plan, and Yolo Healthy Kids.

Healthy Kids is a comprehensive health insurance product for low to middle-income children ages 0-18 who do not qualify for other subsidized health insurance. The Healthy Kids insurance product is administered by Partnership HealthPlan of California. First 5 Yolo funds Healthy Kids’ premiums for children ages 0-5. Yolo CHI has been extremely successful in raising funds to cover local children ages 6-18 from a variety of funders including The California Endowment, Blue Shield Foundation, Yolo County, local foundations, cities, businesses and individual donors. Kaiser Permanente also provides children unlimited access to the Kaiser Child Health Plan (in specific ZIP-code areas served by Kaiser).

www.YoloHealthyKids.org

CHI Outcomes FY 07-08:

• Two hundred children received health insurance enrollment information
• Eighty-six previously uninsured children were enrolled in a health insurance program
• One hundred fifty-seven children retained their health insurance as a result of the program

CommuniCare Health Centers and Winters Healthcare Foundation, Expanded Access to Dental Care for Children and Pregnant Women and Increasing Access to Oral Health Services
These two projects are expanding access to dental care for children ages 0 through 5 and pregnant women. The first project expands access to care for the existing dental programs of CommuniCare Health Centers and Winters Healthcare clinic by expanding dental clinic hours at all sites for young children and pregnant women. Both CommuniCare Health Centers and Winters Healthcare clinic are Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC), providing primary medical and dental care specifically to meet the needs of the medically underserved population in Yolo County. Both CommuniCare Health Centers and Winters Healthcare clinic provide comprehensive dental care services that are integrated into primary care services, and are connecting the dental programs to the comprehensive medical services offered by each organization.

In the second project, CommuniCare provides dental screenings, exams, fluoride varnish applications, and dental education to low-income children at five Head Start sites throughout the County and RISE, Inc. early childhood program, in order to increase preschoolers’ access to dental services. CommuniCare also holds free “Saturday Dental Clinics” during the year each at each of their 3 dental clinic sites, where children receive free dental exams and fluoride varnish, and if needed, follow-up appointments for treatment.

Increasing Access to Oral Health Services Outcomes FY 07-08:

• Two hundred thirty-three children received dental screenings and 202 received dental exams
• Four hundred and five children received fluoride varnish
• Four hundred and seventy-eight children and parents received age appropriate oral health education