The Washington Artists Health Insurance Project (WAHIP) is an ambitious effort to forge new strategies to improve artists’ access to health insurance in Washington State. WAHIP is a pilot project of Leveraging Investments in Creativity (LINC) in partnership with Artist Trust, and supported with funding from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, the Ford Foundation and Nathan Cummings Foundation. The project will serve as a model for development of state-based health insurance expansion that benefits artists working in all disciplines.

Components of WAHIP in 2004-2005 included:

• Creating a consortium of experts from health care, workers’ benefits, insurance, the arts and related sectors to identify opportunities to expand artists’ access to health insurance.
• Conducting research regarding the artist population and insurance in Washington State.
• Formulating plans for new programs or services that will aid artists, and identifying partners and financing mechanisms to implement the plans.

In Spring 2005, a statewide survey was conducted by the Social and Economic Sciences Research Center (SESRC) at Washington State University, to examine Washington artists’ health care and insurance access and needs. The findings of this survey and other research were examined during a one-day forum on July 18, 2005 in order to design model strategies that can benefit artists and other populations that share similar employment characteristics.