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Who We Are

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, over 43 million people living in America were uninsured in 2002, up from 41 million people in 2001. Nearly a third of the 34 million people living in poverty that year had no health insurance. That same year was the second consecutive increase in the number of uninsured and underinsured.

Simply put, our current system of care does not adequately serve the poor, even when they are employed, andquality care is being seen as a privilege rather than as a right.

In 1998, The W.K. Kellogg Foundation helped launch Community Voices as a pilot program to create greater health care access at the local level and give the underserved a louder “voice” in the national debate on health care access. In 2003, the National Center for Primary Care at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta became the group’s program office.

Our Community Voices sites are based in areas that are home to some of our nation’s most underserved populations, such as immigrants and the homeless. Each area faces its own unique issues and considerations, as well as insurance and health care issues that impact other cities throughout the country. The settings are different, but the goals are the same – to increase enrollment of eligible people into public programs and to improve health care access and quality for the underserved by providing models for change and improvement.

Program outcomes must include a greater focus on primary care and prevention, preservation and strengthening of the community health care safety net, implementation of a stronger health care delivery system, and development of best practices for communities to adapt to unique circumstances.

It is not enough to implement programs without establishing a framework for how they operate, an evaluation process, and methods to document those findings so that adjustments can be made. We continue to develop new ways to measure, define and replicate success at all our sites.

Innovative concepts designed by Community Voices are making in-roads to creating a policy blueprint for the nation. Despite shrinking budgets, rising costs and bureaucratic red tape. Community Voices programs impact the policy debate within their states:

Northern Manhattan Community Voices – New York, New York Serving Harlem and the Washington Heights-Inwood communities and building bridges building bridges between the healthcare providers and the medically underserved.

New Mexico Community Voices – Albuquerque, New Mexico This project has spawned a sustainable system of oral health care that has become a model for systems reform anywhere.

Ingham Community Voices – Lansing, Michigan IHP enrolled more than 30,000 low-income people and halved the number of uninsured in the area. County government can be a catalyst for expanding community access.

FirstHealth Community Voices – Pinehurst, North Carolina We are helping businesses with 50 or fewer employees provide affordable health coverage. FirstPlan received an enthusiastic response from small businesses.

Community Voices Miami – Miami, Florida “Healthy Men Healing Overtown,” is a program responding to a local men’s health crisis. More than two dozen policy briefs tell the story,  which is a model that can be replicated anywhere.

• Men's Health
• Health Insurance
• Community Outreach Using Frontline Workers
• Workforce Development
• Case/Care Management
• Oral Health and Improving Adult Access to Oral Health Care
• Mental Health and Substance Abuse Care
• Prison Health and Reentry Issues