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Expanding Medicaid in North Carolina – Lessons & Reflections

In this webinar, Todd Zimmer, co-founder and co-director of Down Home North Carolina, share lessons and reflections from the ten-year struggle to expand Medicaid in his state. Todd details the history of North Carolina’s fight, and offers ideas on how community organizing can help to finish the job of expanding Medicaid nationwide.

Expanding Medicaid in North Carolina – Lessons & Reflections

from Rx Foundation’s Power is a Social Determinant of Health series

Session description: Todd Zimmer, co-founder and co-director of Down Home North Carolina (DHNC), will share lessons and reflections from the ten-year struggle to expand Medicaid in North Carolina. North Carolina’s example could provide a recipe for holdout states looking to expand Medicaid, and provides a unique example for how to win. While other recent expansion wins have been accomplished through ballot initiatives, North Carolina advocates successfully passed a bipartisan Medicaid Expansion bill through a legislature that had long been hostile to such action. Join for a history of North Carolina’s fight, and ideas about how our organizing can help to finish the job of expanding Medicaid nationwide.

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Session Highlights

Building a base, and the power, of a multi-racial working class in small town and rural North Carolina is the mission of DHNC
The Medicaid gap in North Carolina is estimated at 600,000+ people
Rural hospital closures are deepening care gaps for Carolinians
80/100 counties in NC are small town or rural = asking “what issues are most important to you?” was the foundation of DHNC’s multi-issue organizing efforts across the state, and was not happening systematically prior to their founding in 2017
Changing the public narrative around Medicaid expansion was a core strategy = shifting from a focus on politicians to the people in the Medicaid gap and their stake in expansion moved the needle
Crossing the urban/rural divide, organizing the 80 small town and rural counties was crucial = building a strong rural voice for Expansion was a key strategy
Leadership development and storytelling were core components of their grassroots base-building and organizing efforts
DHNC members were centered in the fight, and met with representatives to share about their personal experiences in the Medicaid gap
Grassroots power-building made Medicaid expansion possible
Building power is a long, multi-year strategy; and “capital flight” after a seeming policy win can be difficult for organizations to sustain necessary momentum to address other pressing health justice initiatives or see through implementation of policies like Expansion

Speaker

Erica Andrade, President/CEO of El Centro

Todd Zimmer (he/him), Co-Director of Down Home North Carolina

Zimmer is the Co-Director and Co-Founder of Down Home North Carolina, a statewide organization building multiracial power with poor and working people in rural North Carolina. He was raised in North Carolina.

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