PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Miral Abbas, Health Partnerships Coordinator at Coalition for Asian American Children and Families (CACF)
3:35:53
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Miral Abbas from the Coalition for Asian American Children and Families (CACF) testified about the Access Health New York City initiative, urging the council to include $4,000,000 in funding for the coming year's budget. She highlighted the initiative's importance in supporting immigrant communities and providing critical health services.
- Access Health NYC supports 37 community-based organizations across all 5 boroughs, offering benefits navigation, community health education, and referrals to social services.
- The initiative played a crucial role during the COVID-19 pandemic, with organizations expending more resources than they received.
- CACF emphasized the need for increased funding to expand services and reach more immigrant populations facing cultural, linguistic, and legal barriers.
Miral Abbas
3:35:53
Okay.
3:35:54
Good afternoon.
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My name is Marala Bass, and I'm the health partnerships coordinator at Coalition for Asian American Children and Families or CACF.
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I'm here today to discuss our Access Health New York City initiative and urge the council to include $4,000,000 for our initiative in the coming year budget.
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With this addition, access health can uplift and fund new community organizations to meet the growing needs of our diverse immigrant communities.
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I'd like to start by thanking the chair committee, chair Alexa Velez, and members of the immigration committee for their extraordinary commitment.
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Access Health NYC is a citywide initiative that supports 37 community based organizations across all 5 boroughs of our city.
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Access Health is led by 4 key agencies, one of which is CACF, and CACF is the nation's only Pan Asian children and families advocacy organization with a mission to advocate for equity and opportunity for marginalized AAPI children and families.
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For context, more than 3 quarters of our access health organizations conduct benefits navigations, community health education, and referrals to social services such as SNAP or health care and health outreach to asylum seekers in our city.
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Recently, our organizations are critical to the city's response in the COVID 19 pandemic at a time when Access Health received no increases in funding.
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Almost all of our organizations report expending more resources than they have received.
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They are vastly underfunded for the important work that they do.
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Over the years, Access Health has built the capacity of its awardees to provide critical services through local trusted community members and culturally responsive and accessible avenues.
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Some examples include distributing health information at halal food pantries during Islamic months to communicating in languages and challenging misinformation about COVID 19 vaccines through ethnic social media outlets such as WhatsApp.
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Some more innovative methods include consulates, which are convenient locations to reach new migrants, local barbershops and nail and hair salons where our awardees send community health workers to visit immigrants and to educate salonists who have notable close relationships with the immigrants, and then, of course, our community health workers who we know conduct linguistically accessible and culturally responsive health outreach.
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Our awardees has built trust and community understanding, allows them to easily translate and transmit pertinent information about health benefits and policies and health enrollment to immigrant populations who we know face cultural and linguistic barriers and legal fears due to their immigration status.
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Our awardees play a critical role by working at the forefront to address fears, dispel myths and disinformation, and provide clarity on important policies and health care and methods that are easily understood given that immigrants are often unreached by mainstream city agencies and media.
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This work will ever be more important in light of potential political changes that are coming to immigrant health and legal benefits.
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Therefore, we ask the Committee of Immigration to consider supporting our Access Health Initiative and in partnership with the Committee on Health, consider an expansion for necessary funding to $4,000,000 Thank you.
3:38:51
Thank you.