When the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency ended, millions faced the risk of losing Medicaid coverage. In New Jersey, Regional Health Hubs were charged with conducting large-scale outreach to households at risk of losing coverage. As an RHH, the Camden Coalition didn’t stop at conducting this outreach– we wanted to learn how to improve our chances of successfully contacting South Jersey residents to help them maintain their coverage.

This report builds on our Q & A with Victor Murray and Aaron Truchil, using data to evaluate a simple intervention: did sending a brief SMS before a phone call improve contact rates? Our teams found that households that received a text first were reached at two to three percentage points higher rates — translating to roughly 1,000 additional households contacted per year. This is a promising learning as texts are a low-cost, simple addition to outreach workflows that can meaningfully improve the odds of reaching people before their coverage lapses.