Harris Health $2.5 bil bond attracts community demands

By Aswad Walker

Harris Health is seeking support from Black voters for their $2.5 billion bond proposal, which they hope gets passed during the upcoming November election. Recognizing the power and importance of the Black vote, Harris Health ofcials met with 35 Black pastors, including Dr. James Dixon, pastor of the Community of Faith Church and president of the NAACP Houston Branch.

Following that meeting, at the behest of the NAACP, a coalition of individuals and organization reps, under the banner of the LBJ Community Leaders Coalition, met to discuss potential benefts and concerns they have regarding the $2.5 billion bond proposal. The group also began formulating a list of demands for services rendered to the Black community in order to receive their endorsement.

Dixon details a list of demands as follows:

1. Address Healthcare Disparities:

“One, we’ve got to have healthcare disparities addressed, not just in the way of treatment, but in the way of prevention”

• Education on nutrition, dieting, heart-healthy meal preparation, high blood pressure, etc.

• Workout space in the facility for community residents who can’t aford gym memberships.

• Educational Curriculums for schools and churches: “We want Harris Health to help to… teach and disseminate information where people gather already on a regular basis.”

2. Address Black Maternal Health:

“We know that the maternal death rate for African-American mothers is twice, if not three times higher than their white counterparts. Tis is a serious issue.”

3. Address Mental Health: “Prior to COVID, we already had major issues from stress and anxiety. Poverty itself is stressful. Resource defciency is highly stressful. When you add to that you’re sick, lack of funds, lack of resources, lack of access, lack of hope, it adds to stress and anxiety.”

• Suicide Prevention: “Suicides are up in our community, especially among our young people. So, we’ve gotta deal with mental health in a very serious way.”

• Addressing Multiple Forms of Trauma: “Northeast Houston and other underserved communities have high rates of human trafcking. We’ve got youth and young people being trafcked. Where do they go for help? Who understands that the reason they’re acting out in school, the reason they’re suicidal, the reason they’re doing drugs is because they’re dealing with the trauma from having been sexually exploited.”

4. Economic Equity: “Beyond the health and medical care, this is $2.5 billion, nearly $3 billion countywide. We refuse to support a bond issue that is not guaranteed to produce equitable participation for Black and minority contractors… If we don’t begin to use public dollars in a way that’s more responsible and equitable, we’ll continue to see poverty generationally. So, we wanna see local minority-owned businesses participating at signifcant levels from start to fnish.”

• In construction and operations

• Business opportunities including “ongoing goods and services that are gonna be needed at this hospital and businesses connected to it.”

5. Set Terms of Agreement: “We’re expecting that Harris Health will present to us a document with terms of agreement that we’ll be able to document and ofcially say Harris Health has committed to these things for health, medical services, human services, but also for economic and business opportunity.”

6. Faith Institution Involvement: “Churches are large landowners in these communities. We’ve gotta talk about how churches beneft because they’re the anchor of our communities.”

7. Historic Integrity of Community Maintained: “What we don’t wanna look up and see is, five-to-seven years from now, afer this hospital gets built, the entire neighborhood around it doesn’t look like Kashmere Gardens, Trinity Gardens, Houston Garden, Settegast, Pleasantville, and Fifh Ward.”

Dixon said the LBJ Community Leaders Coalition doesn’t want to see a $2.5 billion project erected in the Black community, generating hundreds of millions annually, yet “all the money leaves the community and goes to resource other parts of town.”

Nowhere was this “unwinding” going to be easy. But Texas — with its high uninsured rates, strict rules to qualify for Medicaid and persistent delays in verifying eligibility — was on particularly poor footing to handle the sudden infux of renewals.

Now, hundreds of thousands of Texans are scrambling afer suddenly losing health insurance — and the consistent care from trusted health care providers that it enabled them to access. Meanwhile, advocates say many of the people who lost coverage may actually still be eligible, and they’re calling for the state to pause redeterminations until they can ensure low-income children don’t fall through the newly apparent cracks in the renewal system.

“If the high percentage of procedural denials continues, then Texas is on the verge of knocking a lot of eligible kids of of their health insurance,” said Diana Forester, director of health policy at Texans Care for Children. “If state leaders can’t quickly pivot to a more efective process, then they should consider pausing the Medicaid removals until they can get this right.”

Texas is one of just 11 states that has not expanded Medicaid eligibility under the Afordable Care Act, and the state has the highest rate of uninsured residents in the country.

In the first month of this process, Texas reviewed the eligibility of almost 800,000 people. Of those initial cases, about 111,000 people were determined to still qualify for Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program. About 95,000 people were found to no longer qualify. But an additional 400,000 people were moved of of Medicaid for procedural reasons, meaning the state terminated their coverage without reviewing their eligibility.