Affordable Care Act Outreach App

Overview

The Civic Works Project  seeks to identify technology solutions benefiting government performance and community solutions that can be sustained by the private markets and to accelerate application developments that enhance the provision of more effective public services.

With the passage and ongoing implementation of the Affordable Healthcare Act, community organizations like LISC-Chicago have been hard at work providing Navigators to help residents sign up for the Affordable Healthcare Act through the healthcare.gov site.

Great Healthcare at No Cost: Get County Care

Currently, LISC-Chicago has organizers in the neighborhoods contacting residents and encouraging them to go to their closest Center for Working Families.

Using a combination of tools like Wufoo and Twilio, Smart Chicago is helping LISC with their outreach by building a tool that enables organizers to send text reminders to sign up for health insurance to residents.

So far, LISC-Chicago has contacted thousands of Chicago residents about the Affordable Care Act.  Through a Twilio SMS App, LISC-Chicago is sending text message reminders to residents to remind them to sign up for the Affordable Health Care app before the deadline.

Here are some of the details from our scope of work:

  • Assisting with training LISC-Chicago staff members on the Wufoo platform and Twilio platform.
  • Building a web application that links LISC-Chicago’s Wufoo database with Twilio.
  • Web application includes functionality that enables LISC-Chicago to send outbound SMS communication to lists of LISC-Chicago’s own creation. This will primarily consist of texting contacts  assigned to a location a reminder to go to that location to enroll for the Affordable Healthcare Act.
  • Functionality will allow LISC-Chicago to control when SMS messages are sent.
  • Web application is open source and the code repository hosted on GitHub. Code will be written with  sufficient documentation as to be repeatable by others.

If you’re a nonprofit or government agency interested in conducting similar outreach, you can check out our Texting Tools Resource Page.

Partners

LISC Chicago

LISC Chicago connects neighborhoods to the resources they need to become stronger and healthier. LISC Chicago is part of a nationwide non-profit corporation, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, headquartered in New York. LISC operates in over 30 cities and a like number of rural communities throughout the United States. Founded in 1979 by the Ford Foundation, LISC helps both community-based and for-profit development organizations transform distressed neighborhoods into healthy ones – where people choose to live, do business, work and raise families.

You can find out more about LISC Chicago on their website and on Twitter at @LISCChicago.

Josh Kalov 

For this project, Smart Chicago has contracted with civic technologist Josh Kalov. Kalov is a GIS analyst at HERE Maps. Kalov’s previous civic app work includes schoolcuts.org, Child Care Options during the CTU Strike, and the CTA Poverty Map.

You can find Josh on Twitter at @shua123.

Media

For inquires regarding LISC Chicago’s outreach efforts, please contact LISC program officer .

For inquires regarding the Smart Chicago Texting Tool, contact .

Press

Outreach Army Reaches 9,300 with Health Care Info – LISC-Chicago

Urban Neighborhoods take small steps into civic tech – Knight Foundation Blog

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