Illinois Health Matters—Health Care Through the Eyes of Illinois Residents

The Shriver Center has launched a new newsletter, Illinois Health Matters. Each issue describes the current climate of state health care through two stories of state residents’ actual experiences. One story highlights people who are uninsured, underinsured, or on the verge of losing their medical coverage—proving the need for cost controls, insurance reforms, and expanded coverage. The other story showcases people who are covered in Illinois by All Kids, FamilyCare, or Medicaid—to give a real-life example of how these public programs help people and how the programs might be improved.

The Shriver Center sends this newsletter to health consumers, advocates, social workers, health care providers, and public officials. Our intent is to help Illinois celebrate, use, and safeguard what is already good and drive Illinois toward constant improvement and health care for all.

Although we conduct extensive outreach efforts to collect stories from health care providers, social workers, and the consumers they work with directly, we want your stories for Illinois Health Matters. We will be extremely careful about your confidentiality and will always clear your information with you first before we use it. Please contact us to share with us your story or the story of someone you know, and we will follow up with you. Story banking is an essential part of creating and maintaining an information loop between health consumers and advocates to learn about glitches in the system and push for continued reform.

To sign up for Illinois Health Matters, click here. To submit stories to Illinois Health matters, contact Margaret Stapleton.