Mission / History

NH Healthy Kids Mission

• Our mission is to provide access to affordable health coverage to New Hampshire's uninsured children.
• Our vision is for every child to go to school healthy and ready to learn.
• Our philosophy is to promote healthy lifestyles, encourage preventive health and dental care, treat illness early and manage chronic health conditions.
• We value our partners; without them NH Healthy Kids would be an unrealized dream.
• We value our children; they are the future.

Our History — A Timeline

1993: NH Healthy Kids Corporation was established by a special legislative act. The organization is governed by a 17-member volunteer Board of Directors comprised of six representatives of state government, seven appointees of specific stakeholder organizations and four members at-large elected by the Board.



1994: An Executive Director was hired and began working with the Board to establish the organization.

1995: NH Healthy Kids received its 501(c)3 tax-exempt determination through the Internal Revenue Service. In partnership with Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Hampshire and the state’s twenty-six hospitals, NH Healthy Kids began covering children, from ages 3 to 18, in an unsubsidized but low-cost Healthy Babies managed care plan.

On March 1, 1995, the first 39 children became eligible for comprehensive health coverage. At year’s end, 769 children were active members. In the program’s first year, 827 children were served.



1996: The program extended medical benefits to infants and toddlers and added dental benefits through a partnership with Northeast Delta Dental. Since launching the Healthy Kids program, the rate of uninsured children in New Hampshire dropped by 8% as enrollment in NH Healthy Kids doubled.



1997: Working closely with schools and health care providers to promote the program, NH Healthy Kids was successful in enrolling more than 1,800 children - 9% of New Hampshire’s uninsured kids. Congress created the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and appropriated $24 billion over five years through Title XXI of the Social Security Act to encourage states to expand publicly supported health coverage options for uninsured children.



1998: New Hampshire’s Title XXI Plan was approved in September 1998, creating a new alliance between the NH Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), New Hampshire Healthy Kids Corporation and the Healthy New Hampshire Foundation (now known as the HNHfoundation). A statewide outreach initiative, known as the “Every Kid Covered” campaign, was launched to create awareness of the expanded options for children’s health insurance.

1999: Enrollment in the Healthy Kids Silver program opened and NH Healthy Kids began coordinating outreach and education for all of the Healthy Kids programs. Best practices to make it easier for families to apply for coverage, such as a mail-in application, were implemented.



2000: NH Healthy Kids celebrated its fifth anniversary in covering kids. The first quality assurance initiative was launched to evaluate family satisfaction. The initiative also evaluated access to and use of health care services in the Healthy Kids programs. Enrollment in the Healthy Kids programs saw an impressive 82% increase.



2001: Results of the 2001 Household Insurance Survey indicated that New Hampshire reduced its uninsured rate among children to an all-time low of 5%, down from 9% in 1999.

On an overwhelming bipartisan 338-40 roll call vote, the New Hampshire House approved the first state appropriation of $3.5 million to subsidize NH Healthy Kids coverage for children of working families. This action was later upheld in the State Senate.  



2002: The NH Department of Health and Human Services and NH Healthy Kids agreed to centralize the application processing and case management for all the Healthy Kids programs as a way to better serve families and achieve cost savings and increase efficiency. State eligibility workers from DHHS District Offices around the state were transferred into the new centralized mail-in enrollment center at the NH Healthy Kids corporate headquarters.

NH Healthy Kids was chosen for one of the most coveted non-profit awards in New Hampshire – the “Year of Service” Award from Citadel Broadcasting. The award included promotion and air-time on all Citadel Broadcasting stations in New Hampshire.



2003: For two consecutive years, the Census Bureau data ranked NH with the third lowest percentage of uninsured children in the nation. New Hampshire reduced the rate of uninsured children from 10.8% in 1995 to 5.2% in 2003.

NH Healthy Kids took on responsibility for training and supporting agencies that assist families with completing the application process at the community level. A quality assurance program was implemented to track and report application activity and disposition by agency. In 2003, community agencies submitted 27% of all applications received by NH Healthy Kids.



2004: New Hampshire maintained its third best state in the national ranking for the percentage of uninsured children. US Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist called the NH Healthy Kids programs “a national model.”

2005: NH Healthy Kids celebrated its 10th anniversary of covering kids. In ten years, NH Healthy Kids helped more than 80,000 children access health coverage.

NH Healthy Kids was selected to participate in an Eligibility Process Improvement Collaborative (EPIC) from among fifty grantees of the Robert Wood Johnson Covering Kids & Families initiative. The collaborative team focused on a shared goal of rapidly achieving Medicaid and SCHIP eligibility process improvements.

2006: New federal requirements to verify citizenship and identity added challenges for families to enroll their eligible children in the Healthy Kids programs. For the first time in three years, the uninsured rate in New Hampshire increased to 6%. Despite those challenges, NH Healthy Kids made progress through funding from a Covering Kids and Families grant. With the help of a health literacy expert, NH Healthy Kids facilitated the design of a new and improved Healthy Kids application. 

With leadership from Cheshire Medical Center, community application assistors teamed up with school nurses and administrators in SAU #29 to launch the 100% Schools (now known as School Connection) Initiative, a community-based strategy to connect all eligible, uninsured school-age children to the Healthy Kids program.

2007: Governor Lynch and the New Hampshire Legislature approved funding to enroll an additional 10,000 eligible, uninsured children in the Healthy Kids programs.

The University of New Hampshire’s Carsey Institute released an issue brief focusing on NH Healthy Kids and the success of New Hampshire in achieving one of the lowest uninsured rates for children in the country.

2008: NH Healthy Kids and the NH Department of Health and Human Services staff participated in the Southern Institute on Children and Families retention project, known as “Retention Initiative: Achieving Stability in Medicaid and SCHIP Coverage.”  NH Healthy Kids and DHHS staff worked toward the project goal of reducing the amount of procedural closures by examining current renewal procedures to identify opportunities for improvement.

Enrollment in the Healthy Kids Silver program reached a record high with 8,331 enrolled at the end of 2008.

2009: NH Healthy Kids welcomed Harvard Pilgrim Health Care as the medical insurance partner for the Healthy Kids Silver and Buy-In programs.