Federal grant will help HIP’s Project MOVE
Spokane’s Health Improvement Partnership recently received a $300,000 federal grant for a new program to get young people with disabilities into college and the job market.
Teenagers with disabilities may graduate from high school, but they are twice as likely as their peers to end up unemployed, said Tanya Riordan, coordinator for Project MOVE (Mentoring Opportunities for Vocation and Education).
The new program will match kids, ages 16 to 26, with mentors who can help them find resources and make connections. The mentors will be volunteers and will receive training from HIP. Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Inland Northwest will provide technical support for the mentor program.
“We hope to have 150 matches made by the end of five years,” Riordan said. Two other partners in Project MOVE: the University of Washington’s Center for Disability Policy and Research and the Washington Initiative for Supported Employment.
All those partnerships helped HIP get the U.S. Department of Education grant, which has the potential for being renewed for an additional four years.
HIP’s grant proposal was ranked higher than any of the other 125 grant applications, said HIP Executive Director Dan Baumgarten.
“There’s a pride factor in that for us,” Baumgarten said. “They made a special point of telling us that we were number one.”
There is other good news at HIP. The nonprofit agency also received renewed funding through the federal Healthy Communities Access Program. That will help HIP help the uninsured find affordable preventive health care. HIP will receive $314,000 and is one of only 10 organizations to receive fourth-year funding.
The grant means good news for the Spokane County Medical Society’s Project Access program. HIP will channel $30,000 of the grant to Project Access to strengthen its system of donated medical care for the uninsured.
HIP also received a $989,000 Department of Education grant to organize a variety of improvements for Eastern Washington’s child care and early learning system.
More grants
The Washington State University Intercollegiate College of Nursing has been awarded a $739,360 grant to increase the number of Native American and Hispanic nurses serving the Yakima Valley. The two-year grant was awarded by the Department of Health and Human Services Health Resources and Services Administration. It follows a $474,000 grant awarded to the nursing school by the department in 2001.
Basic Health news
It’s open enrollment period in Washington state’s Basic Health Plan, which means people who get their health insurance through the plan can change their coverage if they wish. In Spokane County, BHP members can choose from the Community Health Plan of Washington, Group Health Cooperative and Molina.
People without health insurance may be interested in applying for BHP coverage. There are several thousand open slots.
“We could probably fill the Basic Health open slots from the roles of the uninsured in Spokane County alone,” said Ralph DeCristoforo, coordinator of the Health for All project at the Health Improvement Partnership, in an e-mail.
“To select a plan, the applicant should start with their regular doctor’s office, if they have one, and find our if s/he is contracted for Basic Health; if so, with which company are they contracted?” DeCristoforo said.
“If the doctor is contracted with more than one of the companies, then the applicant should ask the doctor the pros and cons of each company and make the choice from there.”
For information on the Basic Health Plan and other low-cost health options, call Health for All at (509) 444-3066 or toll-free at (866) 444-3066.
Voter resource
The Kaiser Family Foundation provides briefs on health-care costs, the uninsured, prescription drugs, HIV/AIDS and other topics at www.kff.org. Some have side-by-side comparisons of Bush’s position vs. Kerry’s position.
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