May 11--APPLE VALLEY -- All students at Yucca Loma Elementary School now have health insurance, thanks to a fourmonth campaign led by St. Mary Medical Center.

St. Mary estimates that 11,500 children in the High Desert and roughly 75,000 in San Bernardino County do not have health insurance, despite the fact that roughly 70 percent would qualify for either free or low-cost programs.

"They disqualify themselves," said Sylvia Vallejo de Leon, children's health insurance liaison for the hospital. "They assume they make too much, and really they qualify with flying colors. I don't know where they are getting their misinformation."

Vallejo de Leon worked with Yucca Loma's Family Center director Valerie Smith to identify students lacking health insurance. They sent out a single-question survey to every parent, asking in English and Spanish whether their child had health insurance.

The women then assisted parents in enrolling in Medi-Cal, Healthy Families or Healthy Kids, which is available even to those with higher incomes or to undocumented children.

The campaign is also taking place at Joshua Circle Elementary School in Hesperia, where 37 percent of the school's uninsured have been signed up for health care so far.

At Mojave Mesa Elementary School in Apple Valley, Vallejo de Leon said, "They have about half of their surveys back and they are working on identifying children without insurance."

The program is also being spread through local churches, where hospital staff is training members to sign up other parishioners. The hospital has meetings scheduled for next week to introduce the program to St. Joan of Arc in Victorville, Holy Family in Hesperia and Our Lady of the Desert in Apple Valley.

"We're a Catholic ministry," Vallejo de Leon explained. "We want to protect the most vulnerable."

Hospital spokeswoman Emily Abbott said St. Mary is also constantly reaching out to the uninsured in at-risk neighborhoods. Staff signs residents up for Healthy Families and Medi-Cal through their traveling van, continuing with the hospital's mission to get 100 percent of High Desert residents insured.

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