At Health Care For All, our fight for accessible, affordable and equitable health care in Massachusetts wouldn’t be possible without our community-based partner organizations. These groups have deep roots in various communities throughout the Commonwealth, and lead efforts to connect them with information, resources and social supports.
Here on Health Care For All’s blog, we’re excited to introduce you to some of the community-based organizations (CBOs) that have been at the heart of our work. For this installment of our “Community Corner” series, Health Care For All Policy Intern Julia Ma spoke with Damaris Valasquez, Director of Programs at Agencia ALPHA.
I wanted to start off by asking if you could tell us more about the different kinds of services that Agencia ALPHA offers?
Agencia Alpha does three branches of work. The first one is our legalization program, where we help people apply for immigration benefits. It’s accredited by the Department of Justice and we have four legal representatives on staff. The second is our citizenship branch, where we help people become U.S. citizens – through classes, application help, and representation throughout the process.
The third branch is community organizing and civic engagement, and that one grew a lot during COVID. Before the pandemic, we focused almost entirely on immigration status issues. But then during the pandemic, we started noticing that the clients who needed our help were afraid to ask for it. They worried that their information would be shared with other entities, or that they’d be flagged as a public charge. It then became clear that our community needed to have access to accurate health information.
That’s when we deepened our partnership with sister organizations, and developed Equity Now and Beyond, which is a coalition of organizations representing different ethnic groups. We started to walk clients through the healthcare system in Massachusetts and since we already knew Health Care for All, we reached out for guidance, and that was when we were offered to train our own certified application counselors, so we could not only inform people about healthcare, but also help them navigate MassHealth and directly apply.
This combination of legal and healthcare assistance is the work we continue to do now. We call them community resource clinics and every month, we bring in legal representatives and certified application counselors to bring information for those who walk in.
Where does Agencia ALPHA’s reach extend to?
Our main office is in Boston, right by Boston Medical Center. Then we also have a branch in East Boston and a third office in Waltham.
We’ve served clients who live all over the state, with origins in 64 countries. While most have been Latin American, one client that really stuck out to us was this man from Turkey. Our certified application counselors were taking walk-ins at the Waltham Public library, and after hearing that the service was being offered, he came in because he had horrible back pain.
He told our counselor that he needed medical help, but he was too afraid to apply for anything because he was in the process of getting an immigration benefit.
Our counselor walked him through how to apply for MassHealth and how the state would determine the right plan for him. And he applied.
A couple weeks later, he came back and our counselor said he looked like a different person. He was smiling. He wasn’t in pain, and he was so thankful because he was able to see a doctor and now had a plan to take care of his back.
For us, these are the milestones where someone who felt hopeless was able to have their fears and questions answered and were able to get real help. And we are able to see that our work isn’t only for the Hispanic community, it’s for anyone who needs it.
Agencia ALPHA outreach workers spreading awareness of new Medicaid redetermination requirements and helping MassHealth users maintain their coverage.
Agencia ALPHA workers at a resource fair.
You mentioned the importance of building trust by engaging communities to communicate information. How has Agencia ALPHA drawn on this approach in its work with Health Care For All?
For most of our 24 years, engagement meant encouraging people to speak up on immigration issues by talking to legislators and getting involved in specific campaigns, and then during COVID restrictions, we knew we had to find other ways to engage and support communities.
That’s how we decided to set up mobile vaccine clinics and bring them to community members. Since then, we have continued to find new ways to inform the community, and Health Care for All has been a platform for us. They have given us the opportunity to train our certified application counselors to give our clients a clear understanding of all their options.
And I want to emphasize that our members are receiving that information in their own language, from a human being they can feel comfortable with. So Health Care for All didn’t just inform us, they are creating a space for us to be empowered, so we could empower our community.
The healthcare field is intimidating, and the webinars, lunch trainings and support have meant a lot to us – we are grateful to use these tools to navigate a system that is so complex.
Before we wrap up, is there anything else you would like to share with us, especially during this time?
Honestly, the most shocking thing right now is the way that so many people are looking at each other – not as human beings, but just as assets or numbers or burdens.
We forget to recognize that human beings have full capacity to contribute and that parts of our society are choosing to raise fear instead of creating spaces where we can all grow.
A lot of the time, we don’t stand up for a group of people simply because we don’t know their full story. It’s easy to judge, easy to repeat what someone else says about a community, and easy to do nothing because of it.
I always encourage people to come closer to those who are in need, or being oppressed, or mistreated by these systems, and just listen. Because once you hear someone’s story, they stop being a statistic and it changes your perspective.
Learn more about this week’s featured community-based partner Agencia ALPHA at https://www.agenciaalpha.org/.