Communities in Charge Survey, 2001-2003 [Alameda County, California, Austin, Texas, and Southern Maine]

This three-wave survey was conducted as part of an evaluation of the Communities in Charge (CIC) initiative, a competitive grants program funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). CIC provided funding and technical assistance to help communities design and implement new or expand existing approaches for supplying health care to the uninsured. Three of the 14 CIC sites funded by RWJF in 2001 were selected for the survey: Alameda County, California, Austin, Texas, and southern Maine. With CIC grant support, all three created programs that provided fairly comprehensive health benefits to low-income, uninsured participants, who were interviewed by the survey within three months of enrollment (Wave 1) and again at about six months and 12 months after enrollment (Waves 2 and 3). Conducted in English in southern Maine, English and Spanish in Austin, and English, Spanish, and Cantonese in Alameda County, the survey collected information on demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, health status, health insurance coverage, access to health services, and health services utilization. Additional topics covered by the survey include out-of-pocket spending on health care, unmet health care needs, and satisfaction with and opinions about health care. There are two data files for each wave, one with the data from the Cantonese interviews and one with the data from the English and Spanish interviews.