Principal Investigators - University of Michigan School of Public Health

• Minal Patel, Assistant Professor, Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, Principal Investigator
• Richard Lichtenstein, Professor, Department of Health Management and Policy, Principal Investigator

Co-Investigators- University of Michigan School of Public Health

• Barbara Israel, Professor, Department of Health Behavior Health Education, Co-Investigator
• Peter Song, Professor, Department of Biostatistics, Co-Investigator

Steering Committee Members

• Lidia Reyes Flores, Executive Director- Latino Family Services
• Margaret Meyers, Medical Director- Mercy Primary Care Center
• Joslyn Pettway, Program Director-Government Grants- Covenant Community Care
• Roselia Campos, Manage Care Supervisor- Community Health and Social Services Center (CHASS)
• Madiha Tariq, Public Health Manager- Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS)
• Jacquetta Hinton, Program Consultant, Health Disparities Reduction and Minority Health Section- Michigan Department of Community Health
• Julie Tatko, Director of Enabling Services- Michigan Primary Care Association
• Erin Knott, State Director- Enroll America (Legacy Partner)

Research Staff

• Lindsay TerHaar, MPH, Project Manager, University of Michigan
• Alyssa Smith, MPH, Research Area Specialist Associate, University of Michigan

Other Project Contributors

• HoneyLocust Productions
• Student Research Assistants
• Community Partner Organization Staff Members & Volunteers

What is Insure Detroit?

Insuring Good Health is a website with a series of short videos that provide information on navigating health insurance and care. The primary goal of Insuring Good Health is to increase understanding of healthcare coverage and the Affordable Care Act. The videos use storytelling techniques to convey information through six, superhero characters. Insuring Good Health is available in Arabic, English, and Spanish, and in a format suitable for all literacy levels. The website and videos are available to the public at InsuringGoodHealth.org.

The creation of Insuring Good Health was informed by focus groups with key populations (Latino, African American, and Arab American) in Detroit. Focus group participants identified what they considered to be the greatest barriers to finding, understanding, and securing affordable healthcare coverage. The Insure Detroit Partnership developed learning points based on the focus group data that were incorporated into Insuring Good Health.

“Health Insurance is very complicated and the Affordable Care Act is very complicated, but we worked as a team to decide on a simple message,” said Minal Patel, John G. Searle Assistant Professor of Health Behavior & Health Education at Michigan Public Health and co-Principal investigator of the project. “Using storytelling, which is an effective way to raise awareness, we created characters that resonated with different sorts of situations most people would experience, such as transitioning off of one plan to another, managing chronic disease, and changing your doctor. We embedded particular learning points into all of these stories.”
Insuring Good Health was evaluated using a lagged-randomized control trial design with 6 and 9-month follow-up. Surveys were used to assess participants’ healthcare knowledge, confidence, beliefs about healthcare, and behavioral intention related to healthcare navigation.

Margaret Meyers, Medical Director at Mercy Primary Care Center, said her organization tries to help people navigate the system but the number of choices in the marketplace is daunting, and people don’t understand terms like coinsurance, deductibles and premiums. "The website can help patients think about why they would want health insurance and help patients answer some common questions about health insurance in an easy, comfortable format."

All organizations involved in the study sat on the Insure Detroit Steering Committee, which provided oversight and guidance of major initiatives of the study. For more information about the committee please visit the Partnership Overview page.

The Insure Detroit Partnership is an affiliated partnership of the Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center formed in 2015. It is a collaboration with the University of Michigan School of Public Health and several Detroit-area community organizations and health centers:

• Latino Family Services
• Mercy Primary Care Center
• Covenant Community Health
• Community Health and Social Services Center (CHASS)
• Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS)
• Michigan Department of Community Health
• Michigan Primary Care Association
• Enroll America (Legacy Partner)

The primary goal of the Insure Detroit Partnership is to enhance health insurance literacy for community residents in Detroit. The partnership developed Insuring Good Health. Insuring Good Health is a website with a series of short videos that provide information on navigating health insurance and care. The primary goal of Insuring Good Health is to increase understanding of healthcare coverage and the Affordable Care Act. The videos use storytelling techniques to convey information through six, superhero characters. Insuring Good Health is available in Arabic, English, and Spanish, and in a format suitable for all literacy levels. The website and videos are available to the public at insuringgoodhealth.org.

For more information on our dissemination toolkit and using Insuring Good Health with your organization, please contact Minal Patel:
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
(734) 763-0087

Related Links: 

• Project Overview
• Project Team