On the Issues
2008-2009 Campaigns
ACCESS Policy Agenda
We are committed to effecting policy change in the health care and social services systems that serve to broadly improve women's health, safety, and economic autonomy. Often, health care policy debates, both locally and nationally, fail to take into account the real life experiences of men, women and their families. Yet, it is these everyday experiences that illustrate the impact of new policies on access to care and health outcomes. ACCESS encounters the complex realities of our caller partners' reproductive lives through our Healthline, translates those lived experiences into our priority policy campaigns. With sixteen years of experience eliminating obstacles to quality reproductive health care in partnership with low-income women of color, ACCESS is particularly well-positioned to inform policy debates about reproductive health.
The administrative and legislative policy recommendations that we offer in our policy agenda address systemic state and federal issues that directly impact California women seeking all types of health care, including reproductive health services like prenatal and abortion care. Using the stories of our caller-partners to contextualize the issues, we promote solutions that deal with access to the safety net; the number of reproductive health care providers in the state who accept Medi-Cal; contribute to federal efforts to allow public funding for abortion; and, provide a practical reproductive health and justice perspective on health care reform debates in California and nationally.
Read our policy agenda and contact Lupe for more information:
Barriers to Medi-Cal and Healthcare for Pregnant Women
Medi-Cal is a vital resource for the poor and uninsured to pay for all types of health care, yet it remains an often inaccessible or inadequate source of care for eligible women seeking reproductive health services. Many uninsured women qualify for Medi-Cal but encounter cumbersome eligibility application processes, rampant misinformation about standard application requirements, frequent case processing delays and, more recently, onerous identity documentation requirements adopted as a result of the Federal Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. ACCESS is working to expose the every day barriers that pregnant women face when trying to access Medi-Cal to pay for care, propose solutions for ameliorating the barriers and partnering with the Department at Healthcare Services at all levels to remove barriers to care.
Read our policy brief about barriers to Medi-Cal here:
Health Care Reform: Women Inform the Reform!
President Obama and Congressional leaders have pledged to seek the adoption of major health care reforms at the national level, and we have launched a campaign–Women Inform the Reform!–to ensure that the voices, concerns and needs of young women and women of color are raised in the current debate.
In California, there is a silent and growing epidemic of uninsured women who go without being able to access healthcare because they cannot afford or do not qualify for health insurance. Of California's 11 million women ages 19 through 64, 22%–or 2.5 million women–are uninsured. Women's health care matters: to their families, their communities and to the State of California. ACCESS is committed to elevating the voices of young women and communities of color–our communities–in the current debates and working to ensure that healthcare reform addresses our concerns and fulfills our needs!
Photogram Project
In partnership with Raising Women's Voices, a national initiative to support quality, affordable health care for all, we are working with to bring California women's voices into the national heath care reform debate. We are collecting photos of women displaying their hopes and dreams for health care reform. The photogram will be delivered to members of the California Congressional delegation who play key roles in crafting heath care policy.
The photos will be posted on our website and Facebook page and delivered to members of the California Congressional delegation who play key roles in crafting health care policy.
To participate:
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Please answer the following on a white piece of paper in ONE word or line (make sure to include your name, city and zip code below your answer):
What would you like to see in a Health Care Reform plan?
Your answers can include priorities such as:
- Accessible, high quality, comprehensive health care for all.
- Affordable.
- Culturally appropriate.
- Address community as well as individual health.
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Then take a picture of yourself holding up your wish for health care reform! For example:
- Email your photograph to Chibo at photogram2009@access-whrc.org.
- Check out our photo album on the ACCESS Facebook Page for more examples and to find your photo once you send it in.
Health and Justice Now! Campaign
ACCESS is also partnering with colleagues at California Latinas for Reproductive Justice to provide a Reproductive Justice analysis on the Health Care Reform Proposals and to present this frame within the national health care reform debate, specifically highlighting the reproductive and overall health needs of California's low-income Latinas, immigrant women, and women of color.
To ensure that Reproductive Justice is a part of health care reform, we are coordinating a statewide on-line mobilization campaign, in the form of a sign-on letter, in collaboration with CLRJ to respond to health care reform proposals in the context of the Reproductive Justice issues faced by underserved women in California. The mobilization campaign will initiate in early August, to recruit both individual and organizational supporters' signatures and we will present the letter and campaign signatories to key representatives from the California Congressional delegation and United States Senate.
Read the petition here.
Sign the petition through Facebook or through Survey Monkey.
Women Working to Achieve Universal Health Care
As part of the Having Our Say Coalition and Women LEAD for Health, ACCESS is also working toward moving forward the national health care reform proposals. We have worked with the Having Our Say Coalition to create an analysis of the major health care reform proposals from a social justice perspective, and contributed to the creation of a policy brief about health care reform.
Learn more:
- California's Silent Epidemic: Access to Health Insurance for Underserved Women (PDF)
- Having Our Say: Analysis of 2009 National Health Care Reform Proposals (Word)
- Health Care Reform for a Diverse Nation: The Voices of California's Communities of Color (PDF)
Through Women LEAD for Health we are partnering with La Clinica de la Raza in Oakland, to train community health educators about how to affect state and national policy around health care reform.
Learn more about the Having Our Say coalition and Women LEAD for Health:
- Women LEAD for Health is a collaboration of diverse health and women's organizations working to move California toward universal access to health care, by educating and involving women and women's organizations in state and local health reform efforts. ACCESS is part of the Executive Committee
- The Having Our Say Coalition a coalition of over 50 grassroots community organizations, advocacy groups, and immigrant right activists works to ensure that health care reform solutions address the needs of communities of color and to unite California's diverse communities to fight for quality, accessible health care for all.
Medi-Cal Reimbursement for Second Trimester Abortion
Although abortion is a legal medical procedure covered by Medi-Cal, many women experience difficulty accessing abortion care, particularly in the second trimester of pregnancy. The shortage of abortion providers, and those who accept Medi-Cal specifically, is particularly a problem for women seeking abortions from 21 to 24 weeks, when the number of Medi-Cal providers dramatically decreases.
Learn more:
Three Applications of the RJ Lens//Tres Formas de Aplicar el lente de la Justicia Reproductiva
Reproductive Justice, as defined by Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice, exists when all people have the social, political and economic power and resources to make healthy decisions about our gender, bodies and sexuality for our selves, our families and our communities. This bilingual training curriculum was designed by EMERJ and translated by ACCESS to help reproductive justice activists and trainers to build a shared language and analysis of reproductive justice, connect reproductive justice to our communitiesÕ experiences, build skills to identify reproductive justice issues, and to build understanding of the core aspects of reproductive justice.
Learn more about the training tool: