Healthy and Safe Communities
Safe and supportive communities build resilient families and a strong state. But 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. And none of us can be healthy and safe until we do a better job of taking care of our natural environment, which includes lessening our collective carbon footprint and protecting our air, land, and water.
Featured Content
COVID-19 and New Mexico Voices for Children
Since the start of the pandemic, we’ve refocused much of our work on how COVID-19 and the recession are impacting New Mexico’s children and families, and what the state can do to ensure New Mexicans survive the crises and thrive after they’re over. This webpage includes links to fact sheets, blogs, and reports on everything from how the federal stimulus is helping New Mexico to who has been left out.
Taxing Groceries Would Make New Mexico’s Food Insecurity Problem Worse
Despite its overwhelming unpopularity, the idea of reinstating the tax on food continues to be advanced whenever the subject of raising new revenue comes up. Beyond its unpopularity, there are very important reasons taxing food would harm child well-being in New Mexico. This fact sheet looks at some of them.
How the Affordable Care Act has helped make New Mexico families healthier
The Affordable Care Act continues to come under attack from lawmakers on the right, with a suit in the U.S. Supreme Court the latest challenge. But what has the ACA actually done for New Mexico? Quite a lot! Find out more about that as well as the continued threats in this two-part blog series.
Recent Publications
How the American Rescue Plan Will Help New Mexico
Fact Sheet The American Rescue Plan Act will help New Mexico in a number of ways - income supports, housing and food assistance for families, and education and health care assistance for the state, cities, counties, and Tribes. This fact sheet looks specifically at how children of color - who have been disproportionately harmed by the pandemic - will be helped. (State-level estimates, some by race and ethnicity, on how many people will be impacted)
Ending Childhood Food Insecurity in New Mexico
Report New Mexico's childhood food insecurity rate has long been at or near the highest in the nation. The pandemic and resulting recession only made it worse. This report looks at why food insecurity is such a problem in New Mexico, how it impacts children and families, and what the state can do about it. (State- and county-level data on food and economic insecurity)
Recent Blog Posts
How combining a just economic transition and strong climate action equals a safer, healthier and more equitable New Mexico
New Mexicans are already experiencing severe impacts of climate change – harming our health, air, land, water, and economy. The Climate Solutions Act (HB 9) would establish nation-leading carbon pollution reduction targets to benefit current and future generations while ensuring that all New Mexicans will benefit from the jobs and economic growth provided in a clean energy future.
Biden Administration should update antiquated oil and gas leasing and bonding rules
While the extraction of oil and natural gas in New Mexico is mostly done on public lands, the state has less authority over the process than you might think. And while the industry puts a lot of money into our public schools, it could put a lot more money in if the state made the rules. Unfortunately, because much of the public land where drilling takes place here is actually federal land, we must rely on the federal government to set the rules.
Recent News Coverage
New Mexico enacts tougher emissions rules on oil and gas, calls for 98 percent gas capture
“We must not allow the oil and gas industry’s outsized impact on our state budget and economy to be an excuse to ignore the detrimental effects of fossil fuel dependency on our climate, our air quality, and the health of our families,” Jimenez said. “The final OCC rule banning routine venting and flaring is a good start.”
Southern New Mexico counties lagging behind in child welfare
“There's been policies over the years that unfortunately really haven't prioritized many communities and families of color in our state," Wallin said. "And Doña Ana County and Las Cruces have higher proportions of families that are families of color. We know that it's incredibly important to support our essential workers because we know that Doña Ana County has a higher proportion of essential workers as compared to the rest of the state and the rest of the nation.”
Current Initiatives
The New Mexico Environmental Public Health Network became a program of NM Voices at the start of 2021. As our work both on public health and environmental health and justice had been ramping up over several years, it made sense to bring this project into the NM Voices family. As our previous environmental health focused on protecting federal lands and mitigating the harm done by oil and gas exploration and extraction, the NMEPHN work is more broadly based on protecting the state’s natural resources of air, water, and land.