The Leon County Healthy Kids Program began with development of a local advisory committee in 1996. In 1997, capital Area Healthy Start Coalition received a $5000 planning grant to facilitate the development of a Leon County Healthy Kids Program.

The first year of the Program's operation, the local Healthy Kids Council raised $27,000 in local matching funds to insure a goal of 1000 children. We are currently insuring 914 children under the Healthy Kids program with a local match at 15%. The current local match is $30,200/year with our goal being 1000 children. Next year our hope is to raise the number of children insured by Healthy Kids to 1800. The 1800 number is limited by the ability to raise local match. We have at least 9000 uninsured children and, according to Healthy Kids' formula, should be recovering 50% of the total need (4500). Local match at 20% for 1800 children will be $70,000. To cover 4500 children in need, we will need to raise $175,000/year, each year.

With the advent of Federal Title XXI funds in Florida, Medicaid providers are prohibited from donating local matching funds. The $27,000 we raised the first year was primarily raised from the two local hospitals and three local HMOs. As Medicaid providers, these sources are not permitted by law to provide any further matching funds. This means that we are not only trying to raise local matching funds, but we are also having to replace those funds that were deemed ineligible through federal regulations. Florida is the only state in the nation receiving Federal Title XXI funds that require the match at the local level and is not matching at the state level.

The United Way of the Big Bend and Capital City Bank group both donated funds as "start up," but refused to enter into any sort of long-term agreement to provide funds. Indeed, these two sources indicated support only for the first year.

The tax base in Leon County is unique with over 50% of the property being government owned. Additionally, with no Childrens Services Council and no Hospital Taxing District, we are struggling to provide Indigent Health Care throughout the County. In 1997, Leon County created a Health Care Advisory Council and has been working for several years to try and solve our health care problem. Healthy Kids is a part of the Care-Net solution developed by the Health Care Advisory Council. Volunteers have spent hundreds of hours working to develop a comprehensive plan for health care in Leon County. The local commitment is here, but the hard cold cash is the problem. We have no permanent on-going funding options at this time.

Large fund-raising campaigns are conducted routinely by Florida State University, Florida A&M University, and the Tallahassee Community College Foundation. These are in addition to the usual fund-raising campaigns found in a community (e.g. United Way). Competition for donation dollars is fierce.

We support a replacement of the local match requirements. This would allow the program to truly be a state-wide program and not discriminate against communities without the necessary infrastructure to raise large amounts of cash.