The independent source for health policy research, polling, and news.
KFF’s policy research provides facts and analysis on a wide range of policy issues and public programs.
KFF designs, conducts and analyzes original public opinion and survey research on Americans’ attitudes, knowledge, and experiences with the health care system to help amplify the public’s voice in major national debates.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the organization’s core operating programs.
This brief provides insight into lessons learned from Medicaid and CHIP outreach and enrollment strategies that can help inform implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) coverage expansions by profiling a successful enrollment assistance initiative among health centers in Utah.
Community health centers are a national network of safety-net primary care providers serving low-income, medically underserved communities. Based on findings from a national survey of health centers, this brief examines how the pandemic has affected health center patients and services as well as the ongoing challenges health centers and their patients face.
Community health centers, a national network of safety-net primary care providers, are poised to be on the front lines of the unwinding of the Medicaid continuous enrollment requirement when the public health emergency (PHE) ends. Health centers can be effective in raising awareness about Medicaid renewal requirements and in providing the help needed for enrollees to maintain Medicaid or transition to other coverage.
The U.S territories and the Freely Associated States (FAS) have faced an array of longstanding fiscal and health challenges, made worse by recent natural disasters and the coronavirus pandemic. Community health centers are an important part of health care system in the territories and FAS, providing access to a range of primary care services to low-income and vulnerable individuals. Based on findings from a survey of health centers, data from the Uniform Data System (UDS), and interviews with Primary Care Associations in those regions, this brief examines the roles of health centers in U.S. territories and FAS during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nearly half (47%) of community health centers report that many or some immigrant patients declined to enroll themselves in Medicaid in the past year, according to a new KFF survey, and nearly a third (32%) of centers say that some patients dropped or decided not to renew such coverage.
Primary Care Providers View Health IT as Improving Quality, But Tilt Negatively on ACOs Half of the nation's primary care physicians view the increased use of quality-of-care metrics and financial penalties for unnecessary hospitalizations as potentially troubling for patient care, according to a new survey from The Commonwealth Fund and the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Community health centers are a key source of primary care in underserved areas. Their role will grow as coverage expands under the ACA. To sharpen understanding of the health center patient population, this brief compares them to the low-income population overall, using the Health Center Patient Survey and National Health Interview Survey. The pre-ACA profile of health center patients that emerges sets the stage for measuring change and highlights important implications of states’ Medicaid expansion decisions.
This study examines quality among health centers relative to Medicaid managed care organizations (MCOs). Chronic care quality among health centers is high; gaps in women’s preventive care are a concern. Lower-performing health centers have very high uninsured and homeless rates. The expansion of Medicaid and private insurance under the ACA may foster gains in health center quality performance.
This issue brief describes the two primary sources of health center revenue—Medicaid and Section 330 grant funding. The evolution of these funding streams has contributed to significant growth in the health center program, enabling expanded services to millions of additional residents of the nation’s most medically underserved rural and urban communities.
Community health centers provide comprehensive primary care services in some of the most underserved communities in the nation. This brief summarizes findings from the Kaiser Family Foundation/Geiger Gibson Program in Community Health Policy 2018 Health Center Survey to provide a snapshot of health centers’ outreach and enrollment activities as well as changes in service capacity, and overall financial condition since implementation of the ACA.
© 2026 KFF