No, it's not a potato chip

By Lisa Sieren


No, it’s not a potato chip—it’s children’s health insurance. You may have heard many iterations of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). SCHIP: State Children’s Health Insurance Program (the former acronym). CHIPRA: Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (the new acronym). Or just plain old Hawk-I: Iowa’s version of CHIP. With all these acronyms, I would not hold it against you if you did think it was a potato chip.


You have probably seen news stories, billboards or advocacy campaigns related to children’s health insurance. CHIP is going to continue to get a lot of press and promotion in the coming months, so I thought it was time to give a brief overview of this program, especially given its link to United Way’s health priority of improving people’s health.


In short, CHIP is a federal program to cover America’s uninsured children, specifically low-income children. While the federal government provides guidelines around CHIP, states are largely responsible for the design and implementation of the program. Each state’s CHIP program looks different. Iowa’s version, Hawk-I, is specifically designed to meet the needs of Iowa’s children. To learn more about Hawk-I, check out their website at http://www.hawk-i.org/.


The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services recently released information on outreach and enrollment grants that will focus on reaching more uninsured children with this program. Based on these grants, we are likely to see more public campaigns on Hawk-I in the state.


That’s just a quick overview CHIP (just a chip of CHIP, if you will tolerate my humor). There’s a host of information out there on this program, so I encourage you to look more into it if you are interested. Feel free to email me at lsieren@unitedwaydm.org to learn more about what United Way of Central Iowa is doing to improve children’s health.