COVERED CALIFORNIA

Making health insurance a reality amid the pandemic

Background

Many Asian-Californians want health insurance but are mistaken that high-quality healthcare plans are expensive and unattainable. They remained uninsured, despite being eligible for affordable healthcare through Covered California, a health insurance marketplace funded by the California Department of Public Health.
When the COVID-19 pandemic began in Spring 2020, many Californians were more concerned than ever about their health and financial constraints. As a result, the ad campaign “This Way to Health Insurance” was created to help more people make health insurance a reality amid a pandemic and economic crisis.

Challenge

About 70% Asian-Californians are foreign-born immigrants. Many have only come to the U.S. in the last 10 – 20 years. As a result, they are unaware of the help and resources that Covered California offers. In fact, a lot of them often have very limited knowledge of the American healthcare system.
Language has also been identified as a barrier for this segment in accessing healthcare. Over 70% speak native Asian-language at home and prefer in-language media over English. For older Asian-Californians, many rely on their adult-children to translate important public health information.

Solution

Together with our general market agency-partner Duncan Channon, we developed the campaign “This Way to Health Insurance” to encourage uninsured Asians to use Covered California for healthcare options. The objective was to tell people that affordable health plans can be attainable even during a pandemic and economic crisis: 9 out of 10 people who enrolled received financial help.

The goals were two-fold:

1. to motivate actions and drive enrollment (i.e. acquire new members and renewal of existing members)

2. to improve brand awareness and understanding of Covered California

Scope of Campaign