Enroll America Evaluation

Identifying, reaching, educating, and enrolling newly eligible adults into coverage available under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) are complex challenges. To help address support first-year enrollment, Families USA, a national nonpartisan organization, spearheaded the formation of Enroll America in 2010. Enroll America is a nonprofit organization with a mission of maximizing the number of Americans who enroll in and retain coverage through the ACA. Enroll America pursues its mission primarily through its Get Covered America campaign, a project dedicated to identifying uninsured people who are eligible for free or subsidized health insurance through the ACA and aiding their enrollment into coverage. Its strategy includes communications, digital and social media, partnerships with other stakeholders, and extensive field work conducted primarily by volunteers. Supporting these strategies is a data and analytics team that continually assesses metrics in each area to guide and refine the tactics.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) has been a major funder of Enroll America and contracted with Mathematica to conduct a qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the program. The first year of this evaluation assessed whether and how Enroll America’s activities translated into meaningful gains in enrollment in the 11 Federally Facilitated Marketplace (FFM) states in which it operates a grassroots outreach campaign (the field states). The evaluation has two components: (1) a qualitative assessment, to understand how Enroll America’s strategies have been implemented and identify any lessons learned to help maximize coverage and support future outreach endeavors; and (2) a quantitative assessment, estimating the impact of Enroll America on the number of individuals covered through the FFM in the 11 field states.

The first report from Mathematica's comprehensive evaluation, which presents summary findings from the qualitative component of the evaluation, suggests that Enroll America:

• Pioneered an innovative outreach approach that uses data-driven, campaign-style methods to increase enrollment under the ACA.
• Prioritized efficiency and evidence in ways more commonly associated with the private sector.
• Filled two important capacity gaps: (1) coordinating disparate outreach-related activities, and (2) expanding local nonprofit capacity by sharing resources and knowledge.
• Quickly established its credibility at the state and national levels through visible, effective collaborations.

For year 2, the scope of the work includes qualitative research to understand how Enroll America implements its ACA outreach and enrollment activities in states that use the federally facilitated marketplace.