The Health and Reentry Project (HARP) and the National Academy for State Health Policy (NASHP) partnered to support the vital role of state leadership in implementing groundbreaking Medicaid changes to strengthen access to health care as people return to communities from incarceration. These changes include the first-ever policies to support youth and young adults returning to communities from incarceration by strengthening access to screening and case management and policies that make Medicaid enrollment more continuous as people of all ages leave prison and jail by suspending, rather than terminating, Medicaid eligibility. They also include the work happening in 27 states and Washington, DC to use Medicaid 1115 waivers to strengthen continuity of care by providing targeted pre-release services to adult Medicaid beneficiaries as they return from incarceration.
HARP and NASHP led learning opportunities and developed resources for states that are working to advance these groundbreaking changes to improve access to healthcare at reentry. These policy changes aim to improve health outcomes, support rehabilitation, and reduce recidivism.
These efforts included:
- The Learning and Action Network, to support state officials from across health and human services, behavioral health, corrections, and public safety to exchange information and discuss policies and strategies that meet the health and social needs of individuals leaving incarceration.
- The 7-State Reentry Learning Collaborative, which helped states with a pending or approved section 1115 reentry demonstration waiver proposal to improve care transitions for incarcerated individuals who are returning to communities.
HARP and NASHP have worked together to advance access to health care at reentry and authored the following original publications to serve as a resource to stakeholders in the field.
Blog: Advancing Health Access for Individuals Leaving Incarceration: Insights from State Implementation Efforts (June 2026)
Authors: Margot Cronin-Furman, Tier McCullough, John Sawyer, Elaine Chhean, and Silicia Lomax
The Learning and Action Network was launched to recognize and support the vital role of state leadership in implementing groundbreaking Medicaid changes to strengthen access to care as people return to communities from incarceration. The LAN brought states together to share innovative approaches, strategize on ways to tackle shared challenges, and break down longstanding silos that have separated health and corrections agencies. This includes work in states across the country to implement policies that support youth and young adults returning to communities from incarceration, as well as efforts to leverage Medicaid 1115 waivers to strengthen continuity of care by providing targeted pre-release services to adult Medicaid beneficiaries as they return from incarceration.
States have imagined, designed, and executed innovations to build bridges across the correctional and community divide. Through the LAN, examples of states’ innovations can be shared with the hope that inspire and inform all states to build on these groundbreaking efforts. These efforts include:
- Exploring implementation of targeted screening and case management services for eligible incarcerated youth and young adults in New Hampshire.
- Local Reentry Councils (LRCs) in North Carolina to connect returning citizens with community-based supports through structured, cross-agency partnerships and coordinated referral networks.
- Improved data sharing in Utah to enable Medicaid enrollment activities on the front end of a person’s jail admission, allowing the Medicaid eligibility team to approve applications more efficiently.
- Better aligning courts, jails, and health systems in Kentucky to work together to identify needs early and coordinate treatment and supervision strategies throughout the transition from incarceration to the community.
- Engaging current and formerly incarcerated individuals in policy and implementation in New Mexico.
- Understanding the impact California’s reentry waiver program is having on people who experience incarceration and their communities.
Blog: Collaboration Between Community Supervision and Health Partners to Support Reentry from Corrections Settings (June 2026)
Authors: Margot Cronin-Furman, Tier McCullough, Ella Roth, and David Ryan
Community supervision agencies such as probation and parole are increasingly partnering with health and human services systems to better support individuals returning to the community from incarceration. By aligning supervision with health care, corrections, behavioral health, and social services, agencies can better address underlying drivers of corrections system involvement, improving health, reentry, and public safety outcomes.
Decades of research on justice involved populations reveals that a significant percentage have behavioral health issues, including substance use disorder, mental health challenges and social service needs. As these issues are addressed, outcomes are improved and more individuals achieve recovery. Examples from North Carolina, North Dakota, and Arizona show how states have created opportunities for community supervision to more closely interact with efforts to expand access to health care, including mental health and substance use care and social services. Common features of these partnerships include a focus on multidisciplinary training, information sharing, facilitating and coordinating hand offs and referrals to services.
Through this cross-sector collaboration, states are able to establish a coordinated approach to reducing system fragmentation to drive better reentry, effective supervision and public safety outcomes.
Blog: How Allegheny County, PA, Shares Information to Support Transitions from Incarceration: Lessons for States (May 2025)
Authors: Ella Roth, Elaine Chhean, John Sawyer
The Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, integrated data warehouse fosters effective data sharing and systems integration to support individuals’ transitions from incarceration to the community. The National Academy for State Healthy Policy (NASHP) and the Health and Reentry Project (HARP) joined together to detail Allegheny County’s strategies around clinical information sharing, which may inform state-level systems and data integration work and serve as a model to identify community-level data sharing that could be scaled or disseminated.
States looking to build the data infrastructure to strengthen intersections across health and corrections and support individuals’ health and social needs upon reentry from incarceration can learn more about Allegheny County’s approach here.
FAQ: Engaging People with Lived Experience of Incarceration (October 2024)
Authors: DeAnna Hoskins, Margot Cronin-Furman, Elaine Chhean, Ella Roth
States are seeking ways to include people with lived experience of incarceration in reentry policy development, decision-making, and program implementation. To support these efforts, HARP and NASHP interviewed DeAnna Hoskins, CEO of Just Leadership USA (JLUSA), to discuss how states can effectively collaborate with people affected by incarceration when developing reentry policy.
The conversation, which has been adapted into a Frequently Asked Questions guide for state leaders, provides a broad definition to describe someone with lived experience of incarceration and offers suggestions for how to engage these individuals in the policymaking process. Read more here.
Explainer: Key Terms and Acronyms (July 2025)
This resource, created by HARP and NASHP, provides an introduction to key terms and acronyms relevant to new Medicaid reentry policies from both the corrections and health and human services sectors.Terms defined on this page cover corrections and public safety, Medicaid and Medicare, federal departments, and relevant membership organizations.
HARP and NASHP have also created a Resource Repository, a curated set of resources from multiple organizations and agencies that includes policy explainers, state examples, reports, and other resources on topics covering Medicaid, data sharing and system integration, engaging individuals with lived experience, and more.