Outreach and Technical Assistance to American Indian/Alaska Native Communities

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

Overview

KAI provides national outreach and communications for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to increase enrollment in Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Medicare, and coverage options targeting American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) communities across the country. KAI has held this contract for a number of years and our team is trained and trusted to develop and update the cms.gov webpages covered by our contract.

Challenges

Despite disproportionately high health disparities among the AI/AN population, those communities are also chronically underenrolled in CMS programs. Continuing to implement the AI/AN-focused outreach campaign will help stakeholders learn and use culturally appropriate strategies to address these disparities.

Solution

KAI produces print, radio, video, and social media material for CMS, with new content themes each month. KAI also has expanded CMS efforts to improve development and delivery of long-term services and supports (LTSS) in AI/AN communities. These efforts have included literature reviews and research on best practices and models of successful LTSS.

Results

KAI developed and maintains CMS’s LTSS Technical Assistance (TA) Center and AI/AN Outreach & Education webpages, grew the reach of two CMS mailing lists to more than 50,000 each, and developed a more visually engaging newsletter. Our work on CMS webinars engages medical professionals from all levels of care and highlights success stories of how the information makes an impact. Additionally, KAI works to create and place advertisements in high-leverage conferences and events, expanding the reach of ads and swag materials while reducing the overall spend. Finally, KAI helped CMS develop the Office of Management and Budget package for collecting data on state-based LTSS resources for AI/AN populations.