How ASTHO and NAMD Are Partnering to Improve the Health of American Families

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.

To continue reading this blog coauthored by Lindsey Browning with NAMD visit the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice Direct.