The Young Invincibles Challenge

Background:  The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that by the year 2021, the Affordable Care Act will increase the number of non-elderly Americans who have health insurance by 32 million people in 2016. While there will be a significant reduction in the number of uninsured nationwide, the CBO estimates that there will be roughly 23 million non-elderly Americans still uninsured by 2019. In 2009, nationwide, 30% of people 18 – 24 years of age and 28% of people 25 – 34 years of age were uninsured compared to only 13% of people age 35 years of age and older. Research has found that this portion of the uninsured population is at a higher risk for a substance use or mental health disorder.  There are a total of 12,175,000 uninsured men ages 18 – 34 years of age in the US (5,057,000 < 139% FPL; 5,760,000 between 133% - 399 % FPL). Of the 5,057,000 men under 139 percent of the FPL, 23.3% (1,178,281) have a substance use disorder and 5.1 percent (257,907) have a mental illness. Of the 5,760,000 men between 133 percent and 399 percent of FPL, 25.3 percent (1,457,280) have a substance use disorder and 4.9 (282,240) percent have a mental illness. 

Program background:  To address this disproportionate representation, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is seeking new and innovative ideas on how to reach single adult men ages 18 – 34 to educate them on the importance of health coverage by launching the “Young Invincibles Challenge”.  Entrants are to develop a comprehensive outreach campaign targeting single men ages 18 – 34 to educate them on the importance to health coverage and get them to enroll in public or private health insurance. Entrants should take into consideration the following:

• Establishment of Health Exchanges and Qualified Health Plans Regulations, including the Navigator program and the Exchange website
• Message development for men age 18 – 34 years of age
• Cultural and linguistic competency
• Other outreach activities currently implemented at the state and federal level
• Multiple media platforms
• Outcome measures

Ideal entrants are for-profit, non-profit organizations or individuals who have experience in public relations, marketing, outreach or health insurance enrollment.  Innovation is strongly encouraged. Challenge.gov is an online challenge platform administered by the U.S. General Services Administration in partnership with ChallengePost that empowers the U.S. Government and the public to bring the best ideas and top talent to bear on our nation’s most pressing challenges.

Evaluation Methods and Results: Evaluation will be based on the judges of the challenge which will be laid out in the challenge annoucement at the conference.

Conclusions: SAMHSA will use the Health Communications conference to launch and highlight a major initiative on health insurance enrollment that would be of great interest to the attendees at the conference.

Implications for research and/or practice: The challenge mechanisms connects federal government and private organizations to help solve problems the government currently can not.  It is a way to foster innovation through new ideas, unlikely partnerships and development and use of new technology.