November 20, 2015

This week, MOAA joined the Military Kids Matter Coalition, a group of children’s hospitals caring for military families, to establish a framework in the advancement of access and quality of care improvements for pediatric beneficiaries in TRICARE. This year’s event was hosted by the Children’s Hospital of Colorado, which cares for a large population of military children from the Colorado Springs area.  

Children’s hospitals across the country work to address policy issues that affect their ability to fulfill their missions to serve children and their families.  The Military Kids Matter Coalition is the only provider advocacy group committed to protecting, preserving, and optimizing provider and children’s hospital relationships within the TRICARE program.  

As a key leader and advocate for the health care of military children, MOAA has been influential in collaborating with DoD and hospitals on the effort to serve our military families.  

Working together, we are addressing issues that uniquely affect the health care needs of military children.  Most importantly, children of military families experience both opportunities and challenges unique to their parents’ service.  The objective of advocacy efforts is to improve DoD’s understanding of military children’s unique health needs and enhance the experiences of military families seeking care in children’s hospitals.   

“Children’s hospitals are in position to identify issues that impact military family health and readiness,” said MOAA Government Relations deputy director, Capt. Kathy Beasley, USN (Ret.). “Our advocacy efforts have made a difference on many issues which are unique to our military children, but we still have a long way to go.”