Help children and their families stay healthy

Hello, my name is Kristin Slocum and I am interning here at Health and Human Services in Kansas City for this semester. I am working under Adele Sinks' direction as she is one of our Regional Outreach Specialists. This health and human service work is providing total outreach and advocacy to a specified target.

I know it is a busy time for school nurses as school is starting, but I wanted to reach out to you about what the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services is doing to help children and their families stay healthy. In our 4-state region consisting of Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska, we are focused on reaching out to families with children about their options for health insurance coverage.

School nurses, as you know, are an excellent resource in communicating to parents about the importance of health insurance and the options that are available to them. Having health insurance is an important key to keeping students healthy, focused, and performing at their highest level in the classroom.

I would like to ask the Nebraska School Nurses Association to partner with us at the department and to help disperse information to families including information on Healthcare.gov, Medicaid, and CHIP. We have a lot of free resources to make communication easy such as pamphlets, fliers, website widgets, drop in articles, and many other informational pieces in both English and Spanish. I have attached a few of these resources from the following website: http://www.insurekidsnow.gov/professionals/year_round_enrollment.html .