Mississippi Kids Least Likely to Get Needed Medical Care in 2003, Study Shows

Aug. 4–WASHINGTON — A new study shows children in Mississippi were the least likely in the country to have received needed medical care in 2003.

The sixth annual “Back to School” campaign by the group Covering Kids and Families showed 12.7 percent of Mississippi’s uninsured children, or 4,882, had not received needed care. For insured children, 9,769, or 1.7 percent, did not get all needed medical attention.

Nationally, 32.9 percent of the uninsured children had not received any medical care in 2003; uninsured children were 10 times more likely to not get needed care; and 56.8 percent didn’t have a regular physician.

“It just doesn’t have to be this way,” Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which commissioned the survey, said Tuesday at the campaign’s kickoff replete with gospel singers, soccer stars and a salsa singer.

Mourey said the back-to-school months of August and September are the best times to help parents discover what low-cost or free children’s insurance programs the state offers.

Through the Mississippi Health Benefits Program, children could be eligible for Medicaid or CHIP, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, available to families whose income is too high for Medicaid but too low to afford heath insurance.

Francis Rullan, PR director for the division of Medicaid in Mississippi, said doing well in school and feeling healthy go hand in hand.

“Studies have shown that the way to break the cycle of poverty is through education,” Rullan said. “But you have to send a healthy kid to school so they’re ready to learn.”

He said the state as a whole benefits when children are taught the importance of good health and can see how that translates to a better education, better jobs and lifestyles, and stronger families.

Rullan added some may feel they are destined to have diseases like diabetes or high blood pressure because of their family’s medical history.

But he said his office is aggressively enrolling as many as possible of the 75,000 to 80,000 kids he estimates would benefit from the program.

By the end of last December, 68,728 children were enrolled in CHIP, more than double the 30,736 in 2000. Rullan said key outreach efforts include advertising; recruiting at health fairs, churches and schools; and long-term community education projects.

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