The Intersections Initiative: Reflections on Families USA’s Health Action Conference and the path forward for community partners
Amid sweeping disruption, how do we hold the line on hard-won gains—and keep advancing policies and systems that create healthier, more just communities?
In my day-to-day work at Prevention Institute, I co-lead the Intersections Initiative. Intersections, funded by the St. Joseph Fund, is a multiyear capacity building effort that provides flexible funding, technical assistance, and peer learning opportunities for local partners who are advocating for health and wellbeing in their communities. Since last summer, we’ve been engaging a group of community-based organizations in South King County, WA, in a planning period to assess root causes of displacement, discuss the challenges of working upstream, and uplift community strengths and opportunities. These organizations are exploring how they can advance a collective vision for health equity and racial justice that slows and reverses the effects of displacement in their region, while bolstering protective factors that allow communities to thrive and flourish. They are also working in real time to navigate threats to their programming, funding, and communities that have sharply increased since January 2025.
From the Frontlines – Coming Together in Challenging Times
Prevention Institute has been a longtime partner of Families USA–an organization dedicated to the achievement of high-quality, affordable health care for all Americans. In January, I had the opportunity to attend Families USA’s Health Action Conference in Washington, DC, where health advocates from across the country came together for two days of connection and insight from national experts and local leaders.
Against a backdrop of uncertainty about forthcoming changes from the newly inaugurated administration, a major topic of conversation at the Health Action Conference was the potentially devastating impact of cuts to Medicaid. These cuts would disproportionately affect vulnerable and historically disinvested populations who rely on that funding to access healthcare—especially people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, working-class and rural populations, children, caregivers, and the elderly, among others. Since January, we have seen Congress consider significant cuts to many essential programs, like Medicaid and SNAP, and funding for education, all of which impact health in communities. Government agencies and funding mechanisms, especially under the Department of Health and Human Services, have been hollowed out through mass firings, buyouts, early retirements, cuts to programs and grants, and uncertainty about future direction.
As our partners in South King County grapple with how to build a coalition while defending their individual organizations—and programs and services for the communities they represent—I’m reminded of the conversations we had at the Health Action Conference, and the importance of standing together in challenging times.
The Power of Collective Action – Tactics for Real World Movement Building
At the conference, I spoke on a panel with Ali Bloomgarden from Partners In Health United States and Shana Watkins from the Tennessee Justice Center. The theme of our panel, “The Power of Collective Action – Tactics for Real World Movement Building,” focused on practical, innovative strategies for organizing around key issues and building coalitions to advocate for policy change. Shana talked about how schools can serve as hubs for community wellness, with teachers and other staff becoming advocates for students and families, as well as key connectors to Medicaid enrollment for children and caregivers. Ali shared about the impact community health workers make locally and nationally as a voice for their communities in creating programs and advocating for policies that improve health.
During my overview of the Intersections Initiative, I talked about how community partners can come together through coalition work to identify root causes of injustice and seek to address those through policy advocacy. In California, a key element of Intersections was bringing healthcare partners into this type of coalition work and leveraging their strengths, like access to data, local influence as anchor institutions, and systemic capacity for technical assistance related to government affairs. To illustrate, I shared about the work of the Community Leaders Coalition (CLC) in Napa as an example. The CLC mobilized community leaders to collectively advocate for the needs of vulnerable populations throughout Napa County. They worked to make local government processes more transparent and accessible, reach hard-to-count populations through Census outreach, and strengthen supports for immigrant families. Building on these efforts, the CLC was well positioned to advocate for equitable distribution of American Rescue Plan Act funding to public health and community-driven priorities, with the support of their local healthcare partner Providence Queen of the Valley Medical Center. Much of this work took place under a backdrop of challenging national political circumstances, destructive local wildfires, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Forging the Path Forward Together
In the closing comments of our panel, and throughout other sessions at the conference, several key themes stood out: the importance of centering the leadership and voices of community residents, the value of engaging a diverse coalition of partners with different strengths and assets, and the need to deepen and rely on those partnerships during challenging times to sustain the work for the long haul.
“Now more than ever, we have to talk about hope.” –Congresswoman Sarah McBride, opening plenary speaker
These themes align with the conversations we are having with our partners in South King County. Despite the challenges they are facing, they believe in the power of community, storytelling, and collective action to advance and defend programs and policies that impact health and wellbeing. I am inspired by their dedication to the work and to growing a partnership together, even in such trying circumstances. Despite whatever obstacles may lie ahead, we must stand together in our affirmative vision for the future where thriving, equitable communities are not a forgotten dream, but an achievable reality.