Written by Dr. Glenn Schneider, Chief Program Officer
It’s an understatement to say that the past few years have been difficult for public health. In just the past six years alone, we experienced a pandemic that claimed millions of lives around the world and upended daily life for all of us. The rise of anti-vaccine propaganda and overall health disinformation from federal government sources has led to the resurgence of once-eradicated diseases like measles and will likely lead to future increases in overall chronic disease. And at least 130,000 lower income Marylanders, including up to 6,000 Howard Countians, are likely to lose their health insurance coverage due to recent federal policy changes that made it harder to stay enrolled in Medicaid. Add this to other federal budget cuts to food security, housing assistance, health research, etc., and you can see why many feel the future is gloomy at best.
I, however, do not share that bleak assessment. As many of you know, I was born and raised in western Pennsylvania (Go Steelers!), near where Mr. Rogers lived and aired his famous Mr. Rogers Neighborhood television show. Mr. Rogers said, “When I was a boy and something bad happened on the news, my mother would tell me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’” Hard times require helpers to stand up and do the work. And that’s exactly what I’ve been seeing here in Howard County. In fact, I’ve never been prouder of the unsung heroic work of my Horizon Foundation colleagues, our grantees, partners, and dedicated community leaders like you.
In the past few months alone, our community came together to block the establishment of an ICE detention center in Howard County led by grantees PATH, Luminus and CASA. We made inroads on combatting our local housing shortage led by grantees and partners including Bridges to Housing Stability, PATH, Columbia Housing Center and the Howard County Housing Affordability Coalition. And we increased donations to food banks and pantries in response to federal budget cuts and layoffs led by grantees like the Community Action Council and Columbia Community Care. This legislative session in Annapolis, we are working with dozens of other grantees and state/local advocates to restore funding for mental health and substance use care, support housing affordability and renters’ rights, improve maternal and child health, ensure that Maryland follows settled vaccine science and dedicate desperately needed resources to the state’s Medicaid program. Our grantees and partners leading this work are too numerous to list here but we see you! In fact, we helped put together a joint letter, signed by nearly 90 organizations across the state, that urged the General Assembly to help ensure that hundreds of thousands of Marylanders do not lose their health coverage.
Our grantees and partners are essential to the progress we are making as a community, but we still need you to act to protect and advance public health. As we approach the end of the legislative session, we urgently need your help to ensure that local health departments have the staffing they need to help keep people enrolled in health coverage. Please take action here.
Advocating for policy change can seem daunting at this time, but it has never been more important. If we are to improve health outcomes, reduce longstanding health inequities and reverse the dismantling of our public health infrastructure that we are witnessing in real time, we must build our collective capacity to advocate for policy and systems changes. We must also ensure we are training the next generation of the public health workforce the skills necessary to do so – something that my own research shows has been woefully lacking in public health education and training.
I know many of us are facing challenges on many fronts – but the fight for public health is a marathon fight for a better future and for better communities. And when organizations and community members come together to demand positive change, we take one step closer to creating that better future. Let’s be the helpers that collectively respond to public health challenges in our community. The Horizon Foundation is honored to work side by side with helpers like you now and always.
