Office of Health Policy & Planning

The mission of the Office of Health Policy and Planning (OHPP) is to improve access to quality health care for all Virginia residents. OHPP has a longstanding history of collaboration with other state agencies, non-profit groups and private companies. Such partnerships have allowed OHPP to support community activities that assure adequate public health. Specifically OHPP has:

• Contributed to the development of health policy through analyses and research of the issues affecting the cost, quality and accessibility of health care,
• Assisted rural and medically underserved communities and populations to improve health care systems, and
• Developed and administered programs to increase and strengthen the health care workforce.

OHPP Implements State Planning Grant I to Reduce Working Uninsured
In 2005, OHPP was awarded State Planning Grant funds by the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to help decrease the number of working uninsured in Virginia. Because the lack of health insurance has been cited as the greatest barrier to health care access, greater insurance coverage could significantly improve the health of Virginia residents and communities as a whole. One of the community resources provided by OHPP through its state planning grant efforts is a Web site containing comprehensive, detailed data on uninsurance rates by region, results of surveys, new data sources of Virginia businesses and health insurance, national reports on health insurance and many other resources.

• About 640,000 persons, nearly 9 percent of Virginia’s population, had no health insurance at the time of an OHPP survey–a number slightly smaller than the population of Virginia Beach and Norfolk combined.
• Virginia’s non-elderly adults are more likely to be uninsured than the state’s children. More than 11 percent of adults aged 19 to 64 lack health insurance compared to just over 6 percent of all children 18 years and younger. Young adults ages 19 to 24 have the highest rate of uninsurance.
• Consistent with national figures, part-time and temporary workers and those employed in small firms are more likely to be uninsured. Over 22 percent of those working in businesses with fewer than 10 employees, 28 percent working between 21 and 30 hours per week, and nearly a quarter of all temporary and seasonal workers have no health insurance through their employer.

State Planning Grant II Supports Expansion of Insurance Coverage in Central Virginia
Another State Planning Grant was awarded by HRSA to OHPP to support health insurance coverage expansion options in one community. Efforts will result in the development of a Web-based community decision support toolkit designed to meet the user needs for central Virginia. This toolkit will serve as the prototype for other regions. It will support central Virginia’s use of available data to identify local gaps in health insurance coverage and subsequent solutions and options. The toolkit will inform planning for regional options to increase insurance coverage and to address identified gaps and coverage expansion needs in central Virginia.

Goals for State Planning Grant II

• Goal 1: To establish a community-based participatory process for decision-making in health coverage expansion options and pilot that process in Central Virginia - Planning Districts 13, 14, 15 and 19.

• Goal 2: To identify a sustainable mechanism using local partners to maintain the region’s data and for providing on-going analyses of changing community needs and conditions over time.

• Goal 3: To develop a decision support methodology and Web-based toolkit for regional/community-based planning and pilot test the toolkit in Central Virginia.