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
Tax Policy: A Powerful Tool to Advance Racial Equity in New Mexico
Report Systemic racism isn't accidental - it's the result of public policies that benefit one group while disadvantaging others. Our state and national tax systems have been built to benefit those at the top (who are mostly white) while disadvantaging people of color. This report looks at concrete ways New Mexico can make our tax system more equitable. (State-level data on disparities in income, wealth, home ownership, and tax incidence by race and ethnicity)
The Working Families Tax Credit Will Help New Mexico Bounce Back
Fact Sheet New Mexico's Working Families Tax Credit has long helped families who work hard but are struggling to make ends meet. Given the crises of the pandemic and its resulting recession, it's time to increase and improve this proven anti-poverty solution. (State-level data on the benefits of this tax credit)
Recent Blog Posts
How the Affordable Care Act has helped make New Mexico families healthier (part 2)
Since it was implemented in 2010, the ACA has faced strong opposition from Republicans. Although attempts to repeal the ACA have been unsuccessful, the Trump Administration has been highly effective at weakening the ACA by undermining its provisions. This includes making it more difficult to enroll in coverage by adding more administrative hurdles for eligibility and cutting the budget for outreach and enrollment.
It’s time NM diversified away from oil, gas
Pre-pandemic New Mexico saw a boom in oil and gas extraction, which was mirrored by an increase in state revenue. And while many state leaders opined that this boom was going to last indefinitely, the reality for the industry was far more grim. “In short,” the report states, “while New Mexico posted record oil and gas revenues, the oil and gas industry itself was reporting steep losses.”
Recent News Coverage
New Mexican Economists Warn: Change Course Now
“All the tax breaks in the world for business aren’t going to make a difference if people don’t have money to spend,” he says. They get more money to spend by working at better jobs. And they get better jobs through better education, and through businesses attracted to a state with better infrastructure.”
Food insecurity, depression increase in New Mexico, Doña Ana County
New Mexico’s overall food insecurity rate increased from 15 percent in 2018 to an estimated 21 percent in 2020, NMVC said, based on the national nonprofit Feeding America’s “Impact of the Coronavirus on Local Food Insecurity” report.
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.