HEALTHY KANSAS KIDS AND FAMILIES ARE CRITICAL TO OUR STATE'S FUTURE. Every child deserves the opportunity to grow up with the affordable and accessible care they need to stay healthy, see a doctor when needed, and recover when they are sick. Nobody should have to choose between treating their child’s illness and paying to keep a roof over their heads.
Kansas children need routine, dependable care to stay healthy through regular doctor checkups, screenings, immunizations, and dental services. Their parents and families need that same ability to visit the doctor, because uninsured and sick caregivers won’t be able to give children the nurturing attention they need to reach their full potential.
Untreated illness costs money and lives. Guaranteeing access to health care for expectant moms improves long-term health outcomes for them and their babies, which supports the health of our entire state.
A lack of health care, especially in childhood, leads to chronic conditions, shorter life expectancy, increased lifetime medical costs, and sicker families. Living environments with poor air quality, unsafe water, and harmful building components are too common and should be priorities to fix. Additionally, not having daily access to healthy, nutritious food can increase the likelihood of a child becoming sick
Sadly, not all Kansans have the same opportunities to thrive.
KAC works to create a state full of healthy families and communities by advocating for policies that will give every Kansas kid the ability to grow up healthy regardless of race, income, zip code, identity, or ability.
Kansas Can — and Must — Do More to Improve Kids' Health Outcomes
The health of kids and their families directly impacts their ability to thrive, yet Kansas lawmakers have not done nearly enough to support policies that will improve every Kansan’s’ health outcomes.
As of 2024, 51,000 Kansas kids did not have health coverage, even if they qualified for Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). That is a significant increase since 2022, when 38,000 kids were without health insurance coverage.
This shift in the child uninsured rate comes after eligibility redeterminations restarted after the end of the public health emergency in 2023. We were concerned then that more kids would lose their coverage due to administrative paperwork issues, and this new data shift confirms our fears.
READ: Give Kids Health Insurance to Make Kansas Healthy Again
And even families who do have coverage may be unable to access or afford health care services. Kansas policymakers must pass policies that we know will decrease the number of kids without health insurance coverage. We can do this by simplifying enrollment processes for Medicaid and CHIP. We could also increase eligibility thresholds and the length of time between eligibility reviews for Medicaid and CHIP, as well as increasing reimbursement rates that improve access to health care providers in cities and rural areas alike. Finally, we can pursue solutions that lower the cost of private health insurance plans for families.
We can also ensure kids' parents have access to affordable health care, no matter their source of health insurance coverage. While numerous policy changes in the 2025 federal reconciliation bill makes it more difficult to expand Medicaid in Kansas, too many parents remain in the coverage gap – making too much to qualify for KanCare and too little to qualify for the federal marketplace. That’s between $12,228 and $32,150 for a family of four. Because parents’ health impacts kids’ health, our state must implement solutions to ensure all kids’ caretakers also can afford to take care of their health.
READ: Congress’ ‘Beautiful’ Bill Unleashes a Cascade of Harmful Changes upon Kansas Families
Childhood vaccinations are one of the most important health tools of the modern era and have allowed many children to grow up to be healthy, thriving adults. Kansas, like a vast majority of other states, requires several routine immunizations for children to attend child care or K-12 public school. Since 2020, however, lawmakers have attempted to weaken these requirements that have kept kids safe for decades.
In the 2025 session, one bill that became law allows families to exempt their child from immunization requirements in child care setting. In separate legislation, state or local governments are now prohibited from banning public gatherings in light of disease outbreaks.
In recent years, Kansas has been slowly addressing maternal and infant health concerns. In 2022, the Kansas Legislature took an important step by increasing Medicaid coverage for pregnant women from 60 days after birth to 12 months, aligning the coverage of mom and baby. In 2024, the state Medicaid agency began covering doulas as an additional way to address ongoing maternal and infant health disparities. And in early 2025, the state Medicaid agency received a 10-year Transforming Maternal Health grant to transform prenatal, birth, and postpartum services for moms and babies in the state.
There are numerous differences between health outcomes for Black and Hispanic babies, who are born with low birth weights and higher rates of infant mortality than their peers. Black women in Kansas also remain at a much higher risk for severe complications or death before, during, or after childbirth.
Sadly, Kansas' maternity care deserts continue to grow. Far too many areas of Kansas have limited access to birthing units at hospitals. As rural hospitals face challenges to keep doors open, we worry that more moms will have to travel further for maternity care.
Even amidst these challenges, we will continue our work advocating for policies that improve the health of all moms and babies so every child is set up for a successful future.
Policy Solutions
Several policy changes and positions would improve Kansas kids’ and families’ health. The Kansas Legislature should:
- Eliminate barriers to the KanCare program by simplifying enrollment and eligibility procedures, pursuing systems that utilize other programs (like TANF and SNAP) to speed up KanCare eligibility reviews, implementing continuous eligibility changes, eliminating CHIP premiums, and increasing eligibility thresholds.
- Permanently fix CHIP eligibility issues in Kansas law, as well as utilize the new KanCare MCO contracts to address provider network inadequacies. This will help increase access to health providers for Kansas kids enrolled in KanCare. Increasing additional pediatric-related reimbursement rates would help increase kids’ access to more providers.
- Address barriers that prevent parents from accessing affordable health care by eliminating the coverage gap and making health insurance more affordable for parents. Expanding Medicaid and exploring financial credits for families are two possibilities.
- Support and fund measures that investigate disparities in health outcomes — like infant and maternal mortality during birth — between races and ethnicities and prevent these disparities and negative consequences through targeted public health policy.
- Pass policies that can increase childhood immunization rates, and refrain from passing policies that would further weaken them like eliminating basic infectious disease prevention policies. It is imperative we protect children from vaccine-preventable diseases, such as measles, polio, pertussis, and mumps, by maintaining robust vaccine requirements and minimizing exemptions. As more vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks occur, we are reminded why those rates must be increased.
- Invest in maternal and child health infrastructures and services like home visiting, newborn screening, and local health departments.
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