Health Department Forms Folder 0065, 1999-2001

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

managed care plans, monitors plan performance and enforces the terms and conditions of the plan contracts.

In July 1999, the federal Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) approved the initial portion of the mandatory Medicaid managed care program, which allows the City to begin enrolling Medicaid beneficiaries, who have been determined by the Human Resources Administration (HRA) as eligible will participate in mandatory Medicaid managed care. Phase One of enrollment began in August 1999 and will continue for 13 months.

H) Asthma

In Fiscal 1998, the Department launched the Childhood Asthma Initiative to reduce childhood sickness and death from asthma. The initiative has three major components: a Citywide educational campaign; community-based interventions targeting seven City neighborhoods with the highest prevalence of childhood asthma; and surveillance and evaluation activities. During Fiscal 1999, the Department formed asthma committees at three public elementary schools, which conducted community outreach and education activities that reached 2,500 children, 300 teachers and school personnel and 500 parents. The Department also analyzed asthma hospitalization and mortality data by year, season, neighborhood and age group. The results of this study were compiled and published in the Asthma Fact Book. Also, the Department, in collaboration with a consortium of contracted Medicaid Managed Care organizations, developed a standard packet of asthma educational materials and distributed over 2000 asthma services directories entitled "Asthma Services: A Directory for Primary Care Providers in New York City".

The Department was allocated S1.8 million by the Mayor and the City Council to begin a pilot in Fiscal 2000 of the Critical Event Response Tracking System in East Harlem. Critical events include observations of poorly controlled asthma that may occur in a classroom or school nurse's office, at home, at a physician's office, or in a hospital's emergency department. The system consists of two components. The first is a database that will enable healthcare providers serving East Harlem to transmit information on asthma critical events to the Department; the second is case management by community health workers.

I) Community Health Collaborations

During Fiscal 1998, in an effort to strengthen community participation in public health planning, the Department initiated the Turning Point program funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.. The program brings together over 25 community groups and health care-related institutions from the five boroughs to identify public health priorities and develop a multi-year plan to address those priorities. Turning Point supports community forums and the publishing of Community Health Profiles, which presents selected health and demographic information by communities in each borough. Health forums have been held in Queens, Manhattan, and Brooklyn with the Bronx and

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