In spite of the increased availability to children's health coverage provided by the federally-funded Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), adolescents aren't sufficiently being reached. One in seven adolescents do not have health insurance, according to a study by the University of California at San Francisco. The study calls for healthcare providers and children's advocates to develop more targeted strategies for reaching families with uninsured adolescents.
Uninsured adolescents are particularly challenging to enroll in health plans because they have fewer contacts with healthcare providers than younger children. The study of 14,252 adolescents (ages 10 to 18) found that:
- uninsured adolescents are five times more likely not to have a doctor or clinic where they can go for care and four times more likely to have unmet health needs;
- uninsured teens are twice as likely not to have seen a doctor in more than a year;
- Hispanics, blacks, low-income families and adolescents being raised in single parent homes are at the highest risk of being uninsured.
(University of California at San Francisco, Janet Basu, 415/476-2557, www.ucsf.edu)