ICHS Bellevue and Shoreline Community Advocacy Program Expansion (B-SCAPE)

Grantee: International Community Health Services
Timeframe: July 2015 – June 2018 | Total Amount: $659,322.50

Year 1: July 2015 – June 2016. Amount: $208,638
Year 2: July 2016 – June 2017. Amount: $221,261
Year 3: July 2017 – June 2018. Amount: $229,423.50

The ICHS Bellevue Community Advocacy Program Expansion (B-CAPE) program aims to reduce health disparities by improving access to healthcare, health insurance, and health resources that will support improved health outcomes for low-income, limited English-proficient (LEP), and uninsured/underinsured Bellevue-area immigrants and refugees, particularly those from India, Latin America, and the former Soviet Union with low health literacy and those in need of information about services and resources available through the ACA.  BCAPE is part of ICHS’ larger Community Advocacy Program, which has been working to improve access to care and improve health outcomes for medically-underserved immigrants and refugees in King County since 1993.

Responding to community need and demand the program will expand its geographic scope slightly to provide enrollment assistance and some outreach support at events in the Shoreline neighborhood, where another new ICHS clinic is located.

Program activities will be conducted primarily by three FTE bilingual Community Advocates (CAs) at the ICHS Bellevue Clinic (0.875 FTE Asian Indian CA, 1.125 FTE Latino CA, 1.0 FTE CA from the former Soviet Union). The CAs will provide group-level and one-on-one community-based outreach, health education, patient navigation services, and referrals with a goal of 3,000 community encounters, including 200 in Shoreline. This will include:

• Assessing clients’ health and human services needs;
• Distributing in-language outreach and education materials designed for audiences with low health literacy;
• Providing brief health education interventions on topics such as the importance of accessing routine preventative care, healthy eating and active living, how to utilize health insurance, etc.;
• Educating community members about resources available in the community,
• Explaining how to access care at ICHS;
• Connecting patients to services at ICHS and other health and human services providers as needed.

CAs will develop one set of linguistically- and culturally-appropriate materials, one linguistically- and culturally-appropriate newspaper advertisement and one article targeting persons with low health literacy in each of the three targeted communities.

Staff members will also provide ACA-related enrollment assistance in the community and at Bellevue and Shoreline ICHS clinics. This includes identifying consumers’ eligibility for coverage, helping consumers determine which health insurance option best fits their needs, and assisting eligible consumers with applications for enrollment into Qualified Health Plans (QHPs) through the Washington Health Benefits Exchange and Washington Apple Health. When community members are ineligible for coverage, CAs will provide information about ICHS’ sliding fee scale program, which provides discounts based on patients’ income and household size. No patient will be denied services due to inability to pay.