THE BASICS:Name or Nickname: Roshni BagYear & Age: Sophomore, 19Hometown: Carmel, INMajor: Health care administrationExtra Curricular Activities: Wells Scholar, CoverMonroe, Human Trafficking Awareness, Crimson CorpsSister or Independent: IndependentDream Job: Head of a hospital
FAVES:TV Show: “Breaking Bad” and “House of Cards”Movie: “The Italian Job”Sport: TennisFlavor ice cream: Birthday cakePlace to eat in Bloomington: AmiPresident: Ronald ReaganPlace to study on campus: Pourhouse CafeAspect of IU: I get to take classes from some of the most highly rated programs in the country, and being in the Big Ten is awesome.
HCIU: Tell me about CoverMonroe.RB: CoverMonroe is a local nonprofit established a little over a year ago that helps people in the Monroe County community learn about the Affordable Care Act, or ACA. Basically what the ACA entails, and if you’re eligible or not. Our main purpose with CoverMonroe is outreach because an astounding number of people in Monroe County are actually uninsured. Because of this new prohibition to the ACA, there is now going to be a 2% penalty tax if you aren’t insured, so we want to spread the message about that and help prevent people from being taxed unnecessarily. We want to get people registered, and get a conversation started.
HCIU: What do you do within the organization?RB: I’m an intern at CoverMonroe. Right now my job is to create a database, and I’m setting up a partnership between CoverMonroe and IU Health.
HCIU: What kind of programs does CoverMonroe do to reach out to the Bloomington community?RB: We have a number of outreach events and community fairs where we help on a one-on-one basis to sign people up for coverage. The open enrollment period is from November to February, so we’re trying to do as much outreach as possible before this time so people know where to go, where to sign up, and how we can help them. We contact local business and local faith organizations to spread the message, too.
HCIU: What has been the biggest obstacle for you as an intern and for CoverMonroe as a whole?RB: We have to go door to door in the community. One important thing about CoverMonroe is that our targeted demographic are not able to be reached by mediums that have basically become the norm in contacting people, like social media, email, and telephone. A lot of these people are from very poor communities, so we actually physically need to go distribute flyers and pamphlets and tell them in person.
HCIU: How can Collegiettes get involved with CoverMonroe?RB: You can have as big of small as a role that you want. You can intern, like me, you can volunteer, or you can work on social media outreach. We also have people assist on setting up business and financial plans. There’s something for everybody. One of the cool things about CoverMonroe is that we actually train our volunteers in the ACA. We have a partner student group on campus, the university chapter of the organization, so you can get involved with either the parent organization or the IU chapter to become a healthcare advocate. There are a lot of IU students doing it. It’s just a two hour training session and from there you’ll have enough information to be able to help with our outreach events.
*Photos courtesy of Roshni Bag