New Hampshire Hospital Launches CHIP Outreach Effort for Hispanics

A New Hampshire hospital has launched a campaign to encourage uninsured Hispanic residents to enroll in the state's CHIP program, the Nashua Telegraph reports. For the first time, Southern New Hampshire Medical Center has filmed a new half-hour episode of its " Health Partners" network television program entirely in Spanish, offering Spanish-speaking viewers information about New Hampshire Healthy Kids and identifying the hospital's bilingual staff "who can answer questions and assist with enrollment." In addition, the hospital is sponsoring a newspaper advertising campaign in Spanish detailing the "importance of preventive care and health insurance." Currently, the state's phone answering system for Healthy Kids does not offer Spanish instructions, and enrollment forms are available only in English. According to Patricia Talyor, the host and producer of "Health Partners," the show will try to address such barriers and the reasons many Hispanics -- both English and non-English speaking -- do not attempt to enroll in Healthy Kids. These reasons include a lack of understanding about the U.S. health care system and some immigrants' fear that they will be deported if they seek government assistance, the Telegraph reports. Healthy Kids is available to non-citizens, but many Hispanics either are unaware of this or believe they will not meet the income or residency eligibility requirements. "We are so far north and away from what would normally be the countries of origin for the Hispanic community that it is really a wonderful thing to be able to reach out to these people in their own language," Talyor said (Safer, Nashua Telegraph, 3/5).