Healthy and Safe Communities
Our communities, workforce, and economy cannot be healthy when so many New Mexico children and families lack access to a comprehensive and high-quality system of physical and behavioral health, prevention, and wellness resources. Safe and supportive communities build resilient families and a strong state.
Featured Reports
New Mexico Kids at the Crossroads
With the highest rate of child poverty in the nation, New Mexico is not providing the opportunities our children need to succeed. But the good news is that we can improve opportunities for New Mexico’s kids through public policy. This children's agenda for candidates in the 2018 election provides 30 policy recommendations that will help improve child well-being in New Mexico.
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The Medicaid expansion has helped New Mexico’s bottom line
The Medicaid expansion hasn't just provided health care to thousands of New Mexico adults -- it's also been good for the state's bottom line. This fact sheet follows the money to show how this program has helped New Mexico's cash flow. (Feb. 2018)
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Medicaid under threat
Both of the bills in Congress that would repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act include major threats to Medicaid that go beyond deep federal funding cuts. This fact sheet looks at some of the threats at both the state and federal levels and what they would mean for New Mexicans. (Fact sheet; updated Aug. 2017)
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Recent Publications
New Mexico has a long and proud history of cutting-edge innovation in many fields, so making progress on child well-being is within our reach if we fully commit to it. This report lays out the ways in which we can move the needle on child well-being by enacting smart public policies.Read more
New Mexico has had one of the slowest job growth rates in the nation. But one industry is leading the way with new hires--and we have the Affordable Care Act, and specifically the Medicaid expansion, to thank for much of that. This fact sheet illustrates how health care jobs are good for the whole state. (Feb. 2018) Read more
Thanks to the Medicaid expansion, thousands more adults now have health care, but even though the number of people covered has increased significantly, the cost to cover them has not. (Feb. 2018) Read more
View all Healthy and Safe Communities publications
Recent Blog Posts
April 19, 2018
Much of New Mexico’s array of scenic beauty has been enhanced and protected by a relatively little-known federal program called the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). Unfortunately, at the end of the federal fiscal year, the sun will set on one of our country’s greatest conservation programs if Congress fails to reauthorize it. The loss of the LWCF would not bode well for America.
September 20, 2017
New Mexico’s governor is responsible for expanding Medicaid here, and it’s had significant economic and health benefits for the state. So where is Governor Martinez on this issue? We don’t know because she hasn’t spoken up.
July 12, 2017
Diana was nervous as she spoke to the nearly 400 people gathered at our 5
th annual KIDS COUNT Conference. As part of the panel discussion on women’s economic security and child well-being, Diana shared her frustration when, after a decade of working in the early education field and rising to the level of assistant director, she was still earning minimum wage. Her only raises, she said, came from changes in minimum wage laws. But this wasn’t the part of her story that I found most powerful. What really stuck with me was when she told us about having to become a single parent after surviving a domestic violence attack.
June 29, 2017
There is generally much less accountability when private companies run government programs. It becomes not only more difficult to determine just how our tax dollars are being spent, but there is also more room for subtle forms of discrimination to take place. By definition privatization means an economic focus on the use of public lands rather than a conservation and equity focus.
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Current Initiatives
A Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is a study to determine if a public policy may have unintended consequences on the health of a community or population. Specifically, this HIA looks at whether reinstating the gross receipts tax on food–essentially raising the cost of groceries–would negatively impact the health of New Mexico’s low-income families and, if so, whether the potential benefits of more revenue for local governments would offset such impacts.
Resources
Big Ideas: Children in the Southwest The Southwest is home to more than one-fourth of America’s children. This unique set of publications brings some of America’s most innovative thinkers together to examine the distinct needs of children in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah, and offer game-changing ideas to meet those needs. Our own Bill Jordan was tapped as a resource for this First Focus publication.
