Simply having insurance coverage does not guarantee good access or high quality health care. Covering Kids & Families, a national initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), opened the door to health coverage for millions of children and adults across the country. The Center for Health Care Strategies’Covering Kids & Families Access Initiative, also funded by RWJF, went a step further, working with local consumer organizations to explore ways of ensuring that children and adults enrolled in Medicaid receive the health care they need.

This toolkit describes the efforts of 18 local organizations in 15 states, under the Covering Kids & Families Access Initiative, to identify barriers and design interventions to improve access to care for low-income families. The toolkit provides a roadmap to help local organizations, states, health plans and local funders to define priority areas and to develop and support specific, feasible projects, appropriate to their local context, that can effectively identify and reduce common barriers to care. We hope the lessons in this toolkit will enhance community efforts to make meaningful improvements in health care access for low-income families.