Parent Mentors an Effective Way to Secure Health Coverage and Improve Healthcare Access for Uninsured Children While Saving Money

Five million U.S. children are uninsured, despite two-thirds of them being eligible for coverage through Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

A new study of Pediatrics shows that using parent mentors is a highly effective way to get Medicaid/CHIP-eligible uninsured children covered and potentially save the nation billions of dollars. Parent mentors are a special category of community health workers who have personal experience with situations facing families they serve.
For the study, “Parent Mentors and Insuring Uninsured Children: A Randomized Controlled Trial”, parents who had at least one child enrolled in Medicaid/CHIP received two days of training and then helped families fill out and submit applications, address social determinants, find primary care doctors and fill other “medical home” needs.
The randomized trial of 237 participants showed parent mentors were significantly more effective than traditional Medicaid/CHIP outreach and enrollment methods in insuring uninsured minority children, obtaining insurance faster, sustaining long-term coverage, reducing out-of-pocket costs for families, achieving parental satisfaction and care quality and improving access to primary, dental and specialty care, among other measures.
Parent mentors were inexpensive, researchers found, costing $53 per child month and saving $6,045 per insured child. Based on these cost savings, according to the study, national implementation of parent mentor interventions to insure all Medicaid/CHIP-eligible uninsured children could save the United States $17 billion to $20 billion per year. 
Study authors conclude that parent mentors and similar peer mentors for adults could be highly cost-effective ways to reduce or eliminate insurance disparities and insure all Americans.