May 17, 2021
From Maine Public
Health Inequities: What Programs & Resources Help Underserved Groups in Maine Access Health Care. The pandemic has accentuated the problems of access to health care inMaine, especially among immigrants, BIPOC, rural and lower-income communities. We discuss how these disparities affect people, and what is being done statewide to help—including with current efforts to get more Mainers vaccinated…
April 12, 2021
From The Maine Beacon
For Edier Ramirez, not having access to state health care services isn’t just harmful to his physical health. Like others in a similar position, it also affects his mental health and his overall quality of life.
“They’re [many] people in the state who don’t qualify because of their immigration status, and always it’s really hurtful,” Ramirez said.
He said many who aren’t eligible for MaineCare — the state’s Medicaid program — worry that if they go to a doctor, they won’t be able to get services or will be left with an exorbitant bill they can’t afford. As a result, people often forgo medical care, he said…
March 7, 2021
From The Maine Monitor
In February 2020, Margaret Downing read an article that terrified her. It predicted that a novel coronavirus spreading around the world would overwhelm U.S. healthcare systems, particularly those in small communities like her town of Yarmouth.
“It was very obvious to me that this was going to be a very bad situation,” Downing, 73, said this month. “There were going to be a lot of people that got sick, a lot of people that died. It required immediate and energetic focus. We needed to get…
January 22, 2021
From The Maine Beacon
As Maine pushes forward with distributing the COVID-19 vaccine, immigrant leaders in the state are ramping up outreach efforts to ensure New Mainers have access to inoculation and information about the vaccine that can combat historically-based vaccine hesitancy…
December 3, 2020
From The Maine Beacon
Amid a pandemic that has led to thousands of Mainers losing their jobs, more people are signing up for health care plans through the Affordable Care Act marketplace during the open enrollment window, which ends Dec. 15.
From Nov. 1 (when open enrollment started) through Nov. 21, 13,595 Mainers have selected plans through HealthCare.gov. That’s an uptick over the same time period last year, said Jackie Farwell, communications director for the Maine Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). ..
January 20, 2020
From AUCD
Over the past two decades, Maine has experienced a rapid growth of racially, ethnically and linguistically diverse populations. Although Maine’s population is largely White (95%), children in Maine are disproportionately from minority populations; currently 9% of children in Maine are from a race other than White.
Lewiston, Maine is the second largest city in the state and a secondary resettlement area for refugees from Somalia (ethnic Somalis and ethnic Bantus)–meaning that these immigrants migrated to Lewiston from their initial (primary) settlement destination in the U.S…
…
