The American Association on Health and Disability (AAHD) is pleased to announce the launch of the Health Insurance Literacy Academy (HILA) Project. The HILA is a partnership among the AAHD, Independent Living Research Utilization (ILRU), the Collaborative on Health Reform and Independent Living (CHRIL) and includes the National Council on Independent Living (NCIL) and the Association for Programs in Rural Independent Living (APRIL). The project will develop, implement, and evaluate a health insurance literacy training academy for the staff of Centers for Independent Living (CILs) so that CIL staff can empower people with disabilities to make informed decisions regarding private and public health insurance coverage that will maximize health, inclusion, and integration.
A focus group of disability leaders from the project partners, CIL staff, health insurance consumers, and health insurance and health policy experts will identify topics and learning objectives for the HILA training curriculum. AAHD will then draft the training curriculum, working closely with the project’s partners, and the project will support its implementation with CIL staff in online and in-person sessions and provide a technical assistance program. Both process and outcome evaluation of the health insurance training academy will be conducted. “Our goal is to establish the efficacy of the health insurance training academy with the goal of making it available to other disability organizations in the future to help persons with a range of disabilities navigate the complex health insurance environment,” said Dr. Charles Drum, HILA Project Principal Investigator and founding Director of the National Center on Research, Knowledge Translation, and Dissemination at AAHD.
The three-year HILA Project is funded under a grant by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR), Administration on Community Living, US Department of Health and Human Services.
The HILA partners are:
