The American Association on Health and Disability (AAHD) is pleased to announce the National Disability Navigator Resource Collaborative (NDNRC) has received funding for a second year. The collaborative will continue to be made possible by an additional one-year grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Persons with disabilities lacking current health insurance face multiple options under the Affordable Care Act including Medicaid in their state, possible Medicaid buy-in in their state, possible Medicaid expansion in their state, and Exchange-Marketplace insurance coverage. In addition, those individuals who previously enrolled through the marketplace face issues with reenrollment including eligibility redeterminations and changes in qualified health plans. The NDNRC is an initiative aimed at providing cross-disability information and support to Navigators and other enrollment specialists thereby ensuring people with disabilities receive accurate information when selecting, enrolling and/or reenrolling in insurance through the Affordable Care Act Marketplaces. The NDNRC website can be found at: https://nationaldisabilitynavigator.org/.
The NDNRC will continue to provide technical assistance as it had in year one, through its website, the “Disability Guide to Disability for Healthcare Insurance Marketplace Navigators,” Fact Sheets, state resources, blog pots, weekly email newsletters, webinars, social media postings, 1:1 navigator technical assistance and meetings/conference presentations. In Year Two, the NDNRC will build on success of Year One activities and work to create more capacity at the state and community level by increasing outreach and enrollment efforts in order to bridge the gap between the knowledge of navigators and enrollment specialists and the needs of people with disabilities to ensure proper enrollment coverage.
A major focus of Year Two will be to engage in dissemination and outreach activities to assist enrollment. This engagement will include Community Outreach Collaborations (COCs) that will increase collaborations in the community, dissemination and outreach efforts and enrollment of people with disabilities in the ACA. The COCs will have two primary tasks: 1) build cross-disability collaborations with other disability organizations; and 2) have the cross-disability collaboration work as a dissemination and outreach resource with their local and/or state navigators and assisters. The exact location of these COCs will be announced prior to the start of open enrollment on November 15.
Year Two will also see the addition of four more partner organizations to the collaborative: the Association on University Centers on Disabilities (AUCD); Autism Speaks; the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation; and Family Voices. These will be in addition to other organizational partners which were part of Year One. The NDNRC project will still be run by AAHD staff. Executive Director, Roberta Carlin, MS, JD, will serve as Project Director. Public Policy Director, Dr. E. Clarke Ross, will serve as Project Coordinator. Karl Cooper, Esq., (kcooper@aahd.us) serves as Project Manager and continues to be the primary contact person for the project.
The NDNRC is comprised of national disability organizations representing unique cross-disability experiences. Along with AAHD, the other six partner organizations that were part of year one were the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD); the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF); the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI); the National Multiple Sclerosis Society (NMSS); The Arc and United Spinal Association. The NDNRC is funded through a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.