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Access Health NYC: Lessons Learned from a City-Wide Health Consumer/Patient Outreach and Education Campaign
Methods: To reach New Yorkers not yet connected to care, a city-funded program is needed to engage underserved communities, including low-income people, immigrants, communities of color, women and children, LGBT individuals, and people living with disabilities and chronic illness. The key to successful linking of underserved individuals to care are trusted, culturally- and language competent community-based organizations (CBOs). In 2014, the People’s Budget Coalition for Public Health (PBC) mobilized over 60 partners to push for Access Health NYC – a proposed city funding initiative to support CBOs to complement and facilitate the work of navigators by connecting hard-to-reach, uninsured populations to enrollers and to existing sources of care such as the public hospital system, federally qualified health centers, and by educating consumers on financial assistance and patient protections/rights.
Results: PBC leveraged partnerships with elected officials, ethnic media, CBOs, healthcare providers, and labor organizations and held press conferences, hearings, letter writing, informational sessions, and storybanking. Lessons learned from the campaign will be discussed and presented with policy implications.
Conclusions: Supporting the capacity of CBOs is a critical component of the successful implementation of the ACA and meeting the unmet needs of the remaining uninsured. CBOs are an important conduit for engaging hard-to-reach communities and promoting their rights as health consumers and patients.
Learning Areas:
Advocacy for health and health educationPlanning of health education strategies, interventions, and programs
Provision of health care to the public
Systems thinking models (conceptual and theoretical models), applications related to public health
Learning Objectives:
Describe how a multi-sectoral health partnership in NYC developed and mobilized a citywide education and outreach campaign on health care coverage and services for all New Yorkers.
Keyword(s): Underserved Populations, Advocacy
Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: My organization is one of the 4 co-leads for the citywide health advocacy partnership that is discussed in this abstract. I have served as the Health Policy Director for my organization for 7 years.
Any relevant financial relationships? No
I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.