More states offer health care coverage for certain immigrants, noncitizens

Clinica Amistad is a free, volunteer-driven primary care clinic addressing the healthcare access gap for uninsured and underinsured residents, particularly among the Hispanic/Latine community. Operating on $600,000 or less per year, the clinic offers a wide range of services, including chronic disease management, behavioral health counseling, and a Spanish-language pre-diabetes education program. In 2024, the clinic served 956 patients across nearly 2,500 visits, with patient volume growing 10% since 2017.

Clinica Sierra Vista's Health Insurance Assistance Program helps uninsured and underinsured patients, many of them undocumented immigrants, navigate Medi-Cal enrollment and renewal, Covered California marketplace plans and the clinic's own sliding-fee scale program. In 2025, the program assisted 33,680 Kern County residents.

NGOs like The Fred Hollows Foundation and Vision Spring provide vision screenings and free or low-cost corrective glasses to empower marginalized workers, including tea pickers and garment factory employees, to regain their productivity and independence. Workers who received glasses saw an increase in their daily tea-picking output of about 21.7%.

LGBTQ+ organizations in the South, like The Campaign for Southern Equality, are raising money to give to families seeking gender-affirming care services for transgender youth. The money is used to cover travel costs to states without care bans, as well as gender-affirming clothing and other supplies. So far, the group has distributed about 350 $500 grants. In addition to funding, the group also works to ensure families have accurate information about gender-affirming care bans in their state, as the legal landscape is confusing and constantly changing.

Care Ring, in collaboration with other organizations like the University of North Carolina School of Nursing, launched The Bridge, a community-based healthcare initiative that aims to make preventive care easier to access. The Bridge features a mobile care unit that provides free health screenings, counseling support and connections to community resources. Since December 2022, The Bridge has provided care to more than 100 people, 39% of which didn’t have a regular doctor.

The Citizens-Led Tracking Campaign bridges the gap between the implementation of the Basic Healthcare Provision Funds and the effective delivery of healthcare by sending citizens — called community champions — out on the grassroots level to track healthcare funding and ensure everyone who is eligible takes advantage of the care. Through the community champions’ efforts, 32,000 low-income and vulnerable individuals have been enrolled in the program.

The National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) is a social health insurance program that provides access to free, quality healthcare services to corps members and civil servants and protects families from the financial hardship of medical bills. The NHIS covers out-patient care, medicine, diagnostic tests, maternity care, eye examinations and dental care, among other services. Since it was launched in February 2022, more than 2,000 corps members have benefited from the NHIS benefits.

After two years of activity, the National Vaccination Program against Human Papillomavirus (HPV)  reached over 90% vaccination coverage. Following the success of the vaccination program, a low-cost screening program was launched. With more vaccinations and screening for early detection, 2,575 HPV vaccines were administered, 62,468 women and girls were screened, 5,563 people were treated for pre-cancerous lesions and 1230 cases of cervical cancer were diagnosed in 2021.

Indigenous Women Rising, is a health-care advocacy nonprofit supporting Indigenous people, which also runs the only abortion fund dedicated to Native Americans. The assistance of the IWR abortion fund extends to Native people nationwide and consists of funding for any element of abortion care that someone may need including paying for an abortion, transportation and lodging.

The Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative provides a 10-step approach to hospital-based breastfeeding support in an effort to increase breastfeeding rates and reduce the racial disparities Black women often face during breastfeeding initiation. Breastfeeding has been shown to have a significant impact on a baby and mother’s health outcomes and the breastfeeding medicine clinic is available to anyone who is interested, including Medicaid patients who wouldn’t be able to afford the services otherwise.