Canvassers with the nonprofit Health Care For All have fanned out across communities affected by the closures of Carney Hospital in Dorchester and Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer and managed to speak with thousands of people, Executive Director Amy Rosenthal said.
Rosenthal recapped the sprawling public engagement efforts — designed to supplement efforts also underway by work groups tasked with developing recommendations for community health care needs amid the Steward Health Care hospital voids — at the Health Policy Commission’s cost trends hearing last week.
“Thanks to support from local foundations, unions, corporate donors and the state, Health Care For All has had the real privilege of being able to be at the doors in Nashoba Valley and Carney catchment areas,” Rosenthal said Thursday. “We’ve talked to 10,000 people in the past four weeks in those communities about what it is that’s impacting them and what they’re hearing. And we are giving them information, and we are receiving information, and it’s really fascinating.”