Project EXPORT has afforded its community outreach core an opportunity to better understand the barriers that keep families from enrolling their eligible children in public health insurance programs.

"National research suggests that one of the barriers is knowledge, but no one has really sat down and talked to [groups of] predominately African-American families and people who work with them in the Black Belt," Culp says. "It is likely the barriers they face are quite different than what a white, middle-class [family] is going to encounter just because cultural differences are going to impact the perception of programs."

For the last few months, Carter's web of contacts has been getting to know several different communities in the Black Belt by going to health fairs, church and community meetings, and by making themselves available. Culp says it is imperative to get to know communities and their unique needs before pitching health insurance programs.

He says that as a general rule, two-thirds of the uninsured are eligible for existing insurance programs and that at any one time approximately 70,000 children in the state are uninsured.

"The messages you get out in the community need to be continuous," Culp says. "You can't do this once or twice a year and think you can accomplish the goal because every day there's a child somewhere in the state who is losing coverage.

"So what we do is identify what kinds of things work to get children enrolled in these programs," he says. "EXPORT has given us the opportunity to expand our efforts into the Black Belt. It is designed to train people who are trusted in these communities to go out and reach those who need the information. We're involved in interviews with agencies and families so that we can understand what they need to make the programs work for them."