Open-enrollment help for health care

Open-enrollment help for health care

YOUNGSTOWN

Mercy Health-Youngstown is hosting Health Insurance Marketplace and Ohio Medicaid Expansion sign-up information events. The open enrollment period begins Saturday and ends Feb. 15.

Mercy Health-Youngstown experts will be available to help people sign up for insurance at any one of five special events.

They are: 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, St. Joseph Warren Hospital, 667 Eastland Ave., Warren; 4 to 8 p.m. Nov. 19, St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital, 1044 Belmont Ave., Youngstown; 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Nov. 22, St. Elizabeth Boardman Hospital, 8401 Market St., Boardman.

To register, call 877-918-5400. Information needed: Social Security Numbers (or document numbers for legal immigrants); birth dates; pay stubs; W-2 forms or wage and tax statements; policy numbers for any current health insurance; information about any health insurance through a job.

Santas for seniors

YOUNGSTOWN

Home Instead Senior Care’s Be a Santa to a Senior program that provides gifts to lonely and needy seniors in Mahoning and Trumbull counties runs through Dec. 8.

Participating retailers will display Be a Santa to a Senior Christmas trees with ornaments with seniors’ first names and their gift requests. Shoppers can choose an ornament, buy the items listed and return them unwrapped, with the ornament attached, to the store.

Be a Santa to a Senior tree locations are: Walgreens, 5501 Mahoning Ave. in Austintown, 3800 Tippecanoe Road in Cornersburg, and 2249 Youngstown-Warren Road in Niles; Optical Solutions, 6006 Mahoning Ave., Austintown; Curves, 7050 Market St., Suite 102, Boardman; Walmart, 2016 Millennium Blvd., Bazetta Township; and Bella Sole Salon, 945 Boardman-Canfield Road, No. 7, Boardman.

For information about the program, visit www.beasantatoasenior.com.

Support for services

YOUNGSTOWN

Ohio North East Health Systems Inc. in Youngstown is one of two Northeast Ohio health centers to receive $250,000 to support and expand its mental-health and substance-abuse treatment services.

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Cleveland, D-Ohio, in announcing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Health Resources and Services Administration grants, said the funding will enable the health centers to hire more mental-health professionals, to better integrate mental-health and substance-abuse care programs into their primary-care models, and to increase the number of services available to patients.

Neighborhood Family Practice in Cleveland was the other health center in Northeast Ohio to receive a $250,000 grant. Health and Human services awarded $1.75 million statewide.

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