College senior Nick Goodwin has developed a keen understanding of President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act (ACA) over the last year and frequently sits in on meetings with health care executives as a part of his health care literacy organization, Resource and Insurance Navigator Group (RING).
The group is a statewide organization that recruits student volunteers to educate people about ways to acquire health insurance under the ACA, which became available to consumers on Oct. 1, and connect them with basic resources, Goodwin said.
"We build student leaders and reduce disparities in health," he said.
As a result of the company, Goodwin has participated in round-table discussions with top health care executives and also joined in on a conference call between Obama and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.
"One of the things you find out is that when Obama's not happy, the money follows that problem," he said.
RING did not always start off with a focus on targeting uninsured patients.
"We didn't consider it at all," Goodwin said. Not until the passage of the ACA did Goodwin say "let's jump on the ACA bandwagon and offer health insurance.
The Demand for Insurance
Goodwin first recognized the need for such an organization on his study abroad trip in Italy in summer of 2012, during which he learned about inefficiencies in the health care system in the United States as compared to Italy. This spurred him to start RING.
At first, Goodwin said he wanted to create a chapter of an existing health care literacy organization at Harvard University, called Health Leads, to Atlanta. Expansion was not in Health Leads' budget, so Goodwin decided to start his own company.
Originally, Goodwin said, RING's objective was to help people gain access to resources such as shelter, food stamps, utility assistance and subsidized medication. However, once the ACA legislation became a reality, Goodwin decided to take advantage of it and tackle the health care market from the perspective of insurance, he said.
According to Goodwin, Atlanta is a state with one of the highest uninsured populations in the country. Emory Campus Director for RING and College senior Anna Bausum also said DeKalb and Fulton counties are among the metropolitan areas in the nation with the highest demand for health insurance. Moreover, Goodwin said, the United States' approach to health care is uniquely inefficient because it focuses on disease treatment rather than wellness and disease prevention.
According to RING's Statewide Recruitment Director Rana Alsiro ('13C), many Grady Memorial Hospital patients do not have insurance and have no idea how to go about getting it. Grady serves a large proportion of low-income patients.
"A big part of this group is really just education and informing," Alsiro said.
Goodwin said a basic literacy problem exists among some patients such that instructions for prescriptions have to be simplified. For example, instead of telling patients to take a prescription at the same time every day, they are asked to take the blue pill when the big hand and the little hand are at a certain point on an analog clock. Recognizing the need for this service in Atlanta, Goodwin said he contacted his close friends studying public health and other students who traveled to Italy with him. These students comprise the eight-person executive board for RING, which is in charge of RING's chapter at Emory as well as its statewide efforts.
Grant Application Process
Beginning last August, Goodwin and his team met every week for almost a year to draft a federal grant proposal through the Department of Health and Human Services. To do this, they partnered with Grady Memorial Hospital and applied for a grant through a national non-profit organization called Seedco.
Seedco works with local community partners to advance economic opportunity for people, according to its website. One of such partners is the Emory-Grady Urban Health Initiative (UHI), a coalition among Emory's School of Medicine, the Center for Community Partnership (CFCP) and community partners within the state of Georgia.
RING is one of the organizations in the UHI. In August, Seedco became one of two companies to receive a $2.2 million grant from the federal government. The grant is shared among Seedco and its partners, though Goodwin said he could not disclose how much is allotted to RING.
During the grant application process, Seedco recommended that RING expand beyond just Grady Hospital to reach out to uninsured populations in the rest of the state.
Expanding Across the State
Now Goodwin is focusing on expanding RING to colleges in Georgia, including the University of Georgia (UGA), Georgia Institute of Technology and Morehouse College. A chapter now exists at UGA but is unchartered, according to Goodwin.
Alsiro said the reason it is important to reach out to other schools is because the demand for help navigating health insurance information in Georgia is too great for just Emory students to tackle.
"Our main goal is to actually have chapters at each school," she said. "There are so many hospitals, so many communities that we can't reach ourselves."
According to Bausum, RING will also help patients gain access to screening procedures that determine whether they are eligible for benefits packages, which would save them money on resources like food stamps and utility payment assistance.
To launch the marketplace for the ACA, RING hosted an event at the beginning of October in the atrium of Grady Hospital where they handed out materials that offered information on the legislation to Grady patients, Goodwin said.
According to him, doctors and nurses also spoke with RING volunteers to learn about the ACA legislation. Student volunteers are imperative to the continuing operations of RING, Bausum said.
"There are so many organizations that are trying to reach the uninsured or do advocacy and outreach, but what they lack is manpower," she said. Students from all divisions on campus are able to apply for volunteer positions, for which a minimum of four hours of service is required. Alsiro said the positions are not exclusive to pre-health majors.
In addition to providing student volunteers with hands-on experience in the public health and medical fields, RING is also a networking opportunity, according to Goodwin. Goodwin said he is also set to teach a class at UGA.
Looking Ahead
In addition to expanding RING to other campuses, the executive board is exploring avenues to sustain the organization on Emory's campus.
According to Bausum, RING has already received a charter from the University and is in the process of acquiring eligibility for College Council funding by hosting an awareness event later this month.
Also, Seedco is reapplying for the same federal grant for next year, under which RING is remaining a partner.
Goodwin said he hopes that at some point RING will be able to offer other resources to patients.
"Imagining someone who doesn't have those resources at their disposal and has to deal with all these other challenges in addition to potentially being uninsured is so humbling," Bausum said.
Goodwin said the experience has been difficult but he has learned a lot.
Alsiro said she is looking forward to seeing how RING reaches out to the rest of Georgia.
"Right now we're in the middle of something that's so crucial," she said. "We're making a huge difference."
– By Rupsha Basu
