With uncertainty and fear clouding future federal funding of equity-focused programs and Medicaid, one health leader says community health centers should be loudly advocating for their own value.
“We treat Republicans and MAGA folks in rural communities. We’ve got to tell that story and say: ‘This is what we do,’” Michael Curry, the CEO of the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers, told Boston Public Radio Tuesday. “Health equity is not just for Black and brown folks. Health equity is the rural person who has to travel an hour to get to health care. It’s the person who’s dealing with Alzheimer’s or cancer or diabetes.
“We’ve got to protect that,” he said.
Community health centers get about half of their funding from federal grants and Medicaid, according to a recent article by Curry in the Boston Globe . These centers provide primary care services to underserved areas and are, in effect, making access to health care more equitable. Under a brief federal funding freeze last month, for instance, health care providers couldn’t get reimbursements from Medicaid .
Trump’s executive order banning DEI programs has put the word “equity” under scrutiny. But simply removing these words from websites or grant applications may not save community health centers from being a target, Curry said, because the work itself will continue.
“Like, wait a minute: Do we stop doing health equity work, and stroke programs for Black men who die at higher rates of stroke? Do we not do trans health care?” Curry said.
He encouraged people to “hold firm” and advocate in Washington, D.C., for community health centers, to argue that they save lives and money in the long run.
Curry encouraged organizations to not “over-retreat” by going back on their missions while several of these executive orders are tied up by lawsuits.
“Let’s see where it falls in the courts,” he said.
