A rural community for human rights: How a Montana county seeks to realize the right to health care

In extremely rural and frontier areas, poor and low-income residents encounter particular difficulties in accessing the health services they need. Public administrations in sparsely populated counties often lack the capacity to support disadvantaged residents and rely primarily on federal support for community health centers. In Lewis and Clark County, Montana, however, the local Board of Health took the unusual step to adopt a resolution recognizing the human right to health and setting up a Universal Health Care Task Force to identify how to achieve universal, equitable access to care. Despite a complete lack of funding to support this process, the task force, composed of community members, is in the process of completing a community health needs assessment before embarking on the development of an action plan for reform. The needs assessment was supported by a partnership between a national and a state-based human rights organization (NESRI and the Montana Human Rights Network), which assisted the task force in planning and conducting quantitative and qualitative research. In particular, task force members were trained in organizing and facilitating community-based focus groups. This presentation will report on the findings of ten focus groups held with community members across the county, and on lessons learned from the participatory nature of the needs assessment process. Interestingly, two thirds of focus group participants considered health care a human right, and many saw it as a responsibility of local government, together with the community as a whole, to ensure that people can be as healthy as possible.