The City That Wiped Out $100 Million in Medical Debt

Farm stands operating on sliding-scale and pay-what-you-can models are improving access to fresh, healthy food in communities battling poverty and food insecurity. In these models, residents who can afford to pay full price are subsidizing some of the costs for residents who cannot. The rest of the funding comes from a patchwork of support.

In an effort to improve child healthcare, a program at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center matches low-income families with financial coaches when they come in for their child’s appointments. The coaches help them address financial stressors, create long-term financial stability, and connect them to helpful resources.

Richmond’s Office of Community Wealth Building acts as a hub for connecting the city’s many anti-poverty programs and organizations, with partnerships that holistically tackle everything from job training and guaranteed income initiatives to community health programs. Since 2014, the city’s poverty rate has dropped from nearly 27 percent to 17.1 percent.

Through the Midwest Street Medicine program, medical volunteers provide no-cost care to people experiencing homelessness, from simple procedures to help obtaining medicines. As of August, volunteers had helped more than 350 patients and made more than 1,000 medical interventions.

New Jersey voters approved an amendment that removed cash bail so people would no longer be incarcerated because they couldn’t afford to pay it. Now, the courts evaluate each person’s risk to the public, of skipping trial, and of reoffense to determine whether they are held in detention until their trial.

Mandatory inclusionary zoning policies have increased affordable housing stock in many cities across the U.S. In most cases, the policies require developers build 5-10% of new units with rents attainable for low- to median-income people, or pay a fee, which is dedicated to other affordable housing projects. In Redmond, Washington, such policy has resulted in a 42% growth of housing stock since 2010.

The nonprofit Strawberry Week Society is tackling period poverty in Kansas City, Missouri, by providing free menstrual products to organizations that help those in need.

Texas’ Tarrant County Jail has a medical liaison that uses her master’s degree in forensics nursing to advocate for people who are incarcerated and in need of medical care.

As part of a COVID-19 pandemic relief bill, the federal government expanded the child tax credit and distributed the money in monthly cash payments rather than a lump sum when filing taxes. The expansion, which expired in 2022, also increased the per-child amount up to $3,600 annually. The concept of cash-payments trusts families to decide where the money is most needed. Data shows that many families were able to catch up on bills and take away the urgency of financial struggles, opening up space to tend to other physical and emotional needs involved in raising children.

Governments in Norway, the Philippines and the United Arab Emirates have all implemented policies around breastfeeding in the workplace in order to promote healthy child development. Although not without limitations and barriers, the programs each aim to make breastfeeding in the workplace more accessible and fairer to new mothers.