By Carmen H., Patient Board Member
In 1993, I brought my parents to a health fair at my son’s elementary school in San Marcos, California. At a mobile community health clinic onsite at that fair, my father received a simple blood sugar test. The result was alarming; his glucose level was in the 200s. Not long after, he was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes.
That free screening changed the course of my father’s life. Without it, his diabetes would have gone undiagnosed for years, leading to more health complications.
Today, the community health clinics that caught my father’s diabetes are under threat.
Proposition 44, a statewide ballot measure on the November ballot, would force many community health clinics to cut services and close.
An independent study by the Berkeley Research Group found that Prop 44 would cut $1.7 billion from California’s community health clinics in its first year alone, with billions more in cuts to follow.
By imposing unworkable restrictions, the measure would financially penalize clinics for investing in essential staff and patient services, including nurse managers, physician leaders, translation and transportation services, insurance enrollment support, and even mammogram and X-ray machines.
The consequences would be devastating. Clinics would be forced to reduce services and close sites, leaving millions of patients with fewer places to turn for preventive care. Without that care, more patients would end up in hospital emergency rooms, resulting in more overcrowding, longer wait times and higher cost for everyone.
My father’s story is one of many. Every year, California’s community health clinics provide primary care, prenatal care, behavioral health care, dental care, telehealth, and other essential services to over 7 million patients. They care for Medi-Cal patients, the uninsured, working families, seniors, children, veterans, and more—regardless of their ability to pay.
I saw that impact firsthand again in 1997, when I was part of a team of nonprofit partners that helped farmworker families move from labor camps into apartments near their jobs. Two community clinics in San Diego partnered with us by bringing mobile clinics directly to the families we were serving.
Farmworkers face many barriers to health care, especially transportation. By bringing care directly to the community, mobile clinics removed that barrier. Healthcare providers spoke the families’ language, understood their culture, and earned their trust. Children received vaccinations, families accessed preventive care and gained the tools needed to build healthier lives.
That experience reinforced what I had already learned through my father’s experience: community health clinics meet people where they are, provide comprehensive care, and strengthen communities.
My connection to community clinics has only grown since then. My family and I, including my 94-year-old mother, have been patients at the same community clinic in San Diego for years, and I am proud to serve as a patient board member as well.
As both a patient and patient board member, I see firsthand how clinics treat people with dignity, regardless of whether they have insurance or speak English. I have reviewed budgets, asked hard questions, and helped make decisions about how best to serve patients. Like every community health clinic, a majority of my clinic’s board members are patients. The people receiving care help govern the clinic, ensuring patients remain at the center of every decision.
That patient-centered model is exactly what Prop 44 would undermine. The measure would put politicians and bureaucrats in the way of decisions between doctors, nurses, and their patients, threatening essential services that help patients overcome barriers to care and without them, many patients would never make it through the clinic door.
Those cuts would fall hardest on the families I have worked alongside for thirty years: farmworkers without a car, mothers navigating a health system in a language that is not their own, and elders who only came to the clinic because a promotora knocked on their door and earned their trust. When those patients lose access to care, the consequences spread to our schools, emergency rooms, and neighborhoods.
For me, this is deeply personal. Every family deserves the same chance my father had to receive timely, life-changing care.
I urge you to join patients, doctors, nurses, community leaders, Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, the California School Nurses Organization, the California Academy of Family Physicians, the California Medical Association and many others in voting No on Prop 44 on November 3. Together, we can protect California’s community health clinics and the patients and families who depend on them.
