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Policy Advocacy Campaigns

 

On the Issues: 2010-2011 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: June2009PolicyAgenda.pdf
 
Interested in any of the below campaigns? Want to learn more about Reproductive Justice, and Women's Health Policy Work? Apply to be an Activist Volunteer through our Reproductive Justice in Action Program!

Contraception is Preventive Care! VICTORY!

As part of our continued commitment to ensure that the promise of health reform becomes a reality for women, our families and our communities, we pushed for contraception to be included as a preventive health service under a provision of PPACA that requires insurers to provide preventive health services without a share of cost – that is, no co-payments, deductibles or other charges would be allowed! 

 

ACCESS staff, volunteers, allies, and community members advocated for contraception to be included in the prventative services for women, by impressing upon HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that: 

  • Contraception is ESSENTIAL preventive care for women, and better access to comprehensive contraceptive care leads to better health for women and their families.

  • Women deserve to have the same protections for preventive health care that we need as everyone else, without any unnecessary and unreasonable delays.

  • HHS must eliminate the unnecessary and unreasonable delays that are currently postponing women’s access to contraceptive care without cost-sharing.

 

On August 1, 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) adopted guidlines for Women’s Preventive Services – including well-woman visits, support for breastfeeding equipment, contraception, and domestic violence screening – that will be covered without cost sharing in new health plans starting in August 2012!    

 

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:
Barriers to Entry Ensuring Equitable and Timely Access to Medical for Pregnant Women.pdf
 

Health Care Reform: Women Inform the Implementation of Reform!

In March 2010, after months of courageous efforts and hard work by many advocates, including those at ACCESS, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) was passed and signed it into law.
 
ACCESS has worked tirelessly throughout the process to ensure that the voices, concerns and needs of low-income women, immigrant women and women of color were raised in the debate. The results prove that our voices were heard, as all of the members of the California Democratic Congressional delegation voted in favor of the health reform bill!
 
Among other things, the new health reform law will end discrimination by insurance companies for pre-existing conditions and will prevent them from charging women more for health insurance coverage.
 
However, the new law still has provisions that are create barriers to our communities: it requires buyers to write a separate check for abortion coverage and an executive order signed by President Obama to accompany the bill re-affirms the Hyde Amendment[i]. The law also maintains waiting periods for documented
immigrants to enroll in Medicaid, and denies undocumented immigrants the ability to purchase health insurance altogether.
 
Our work on health reform is not over, and now months after the enactment of PPACA, ACCESS is working harder than ever to ensure that in implementation the new law truly provides the health care women and families need, and that women continue to inform the reform!
 
 

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:
 
 
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 communities, 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: