Strategy: Encourage navigators to develop targeted professional relationships with community partners to strengthen outreach within underserved populations.
Where and when it was used: Navigators become experts in identifying and developing community partnerships that target specific underserved populations.
Staff become the primary contact person for those community contacts, which allows them to share their expertise and cultural awareness best practices with all staff.
Best practices to replicate:
- Staff researches and identifies specific underserved populations that interest them and then promote themselves within those communities.
- Linking Navigators to specific populations creates a domino effect among connected service providers who come to know and trust that Navigator.
- Set aside time during individual staff supervision to brainstorm ways for each Navigator to strengthen their targeted population expertise and share it with other staff.
Finding the needles in the haystack:
A recent article by Enroll America stated, “identifying someone who qualifies for a Special Enrollment Period can sometimes feel like looking for a needle in a haystack,” but so can figuring out the best way to connect with trusted community partners who are already speaking with these individuals.
We know that there is much work to do to continue to reach out to underserved populations in the communities we serve and get the message out to those who may qualify for a Special Enrollment Period. Sharing the message with new community partners and service providers can be just as challenging as reaching individuals and families.
During Open Enrollment 1, we relied upon trusted voices within communities and trusted access points to share information about our services with members of different communities. We capitalized upon those connections by always asking, “Who else do you know that we should reach out to?” On a daily basis, we would learn about a new faith-based organization, a newly funded program or a new grass roots community effort that we should connect with.
It occurred to us that key community players who service similar populations are also connected with each other. Many times, they attend regional meetings and trainings where they share resource information. This working collegial relationship helps them to better reach their communities. By gaining trust and building relationships within these networks, outreach can become more effective than by simply cold calling one another and trying to get a foot in the door.
We wondered what would happen if we were to create a team of Navigator population experts who could become trusted and invested colleagues? Who bring cultural sensitivity to the work within these communities? And what would the effect be on staff? The answer? The domino effect.
Two birds, one stone:
Most of us find increased satisfaction at work when it is personally meaningful, so we encourage every Navigator to identify a specific population that they might enjoy working with or further develop existing connections to. We currently have staff who focus on youth, faith, Latinos, African-Americans, Asians, LGBT, the disabled, those with low-English proficiency, re-entry, and immigrants. We empower the Navigators to spend outreach hours connecting within these communities to create memorable relationships and connections with other service providers to help those service providers have easy access to someone that can assist with health insurance.
The takeaways:
- Streamlining development of community connections eliminates replication of work and further increases program awareness.
- Service providers generally prefer to deal with a Navigator they have a relationship with.
- Making this work part of a professional development plan increases employee satisfaction and opportunities to share best practice ideas and cultural awareness within the communities we serve.
Center For Family Services, a human services non-profit organization in Camden, New Jersey operates the Navigator Exchange Program, a service that helps those without health insurance to navigate their way through the Health Insurance Marketplace and NJ Family Care.
This post was written by Robin Stockton, Program Director, The Navigator Exchange Program Center For Family Services.
