{"id":29688,"date":"2024-01-18T12:43:16","date_gmt":"2024-01-18T19:43:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/bill-aims-to-keep-new-mexico-health-councils-afloat\/"},"modified":"2024-01-18T19:43:16","modified_gmt":"2024-01-18T19:43:16","slug":"bill-aims-to-keep-new-mexico-health-councils-afloat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/bill-aims-to-keep-new-mexico-health-councils-afloat\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill aims to keep New Mexico health councils afloat"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Funding
Funding for a health council proposal would go toward covering salaries, travel and supplies. It would also allow health councils to contract with a nonprofit to provide training, technical assistance and help in creating an evaluation system. Anna Padilla\/Source NM<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

County and Tribal health councils are mandated by state law, but unless they get more funding in the legislative session, most of their operating budgets will disappear. One bill aims to prevent that.<\/p>\n

Health councils were written into New Mexico law over 30 years ago as a way to help manage public health resources across the state. Valeria Alarc\u00f3n with the New Mexico Alliance of Health Councils said they fill a gap, especially in underserved, rural communities.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not being hyperbolic,\u201d she said. \u201cHealth councils are literally the lifeline between our community members and the critical resources that they need.\u201d<\/p>\n

The state\u2019s 42 councils, which cover every county, have largely relied on federal COVID-19 relief funds over the last few years. That has allowed them to play a large role in mitigating the spread of the virus in underserved communities. Those funds are set to dry up this spring.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m always taken aback by the fact that the first things that states or the government, in this case state or federal, tends to cut back on are the essential services that a community needs the most,\u201d Alarc\u00f3n said.<\/p>\n

Rep. Anthony Allison (D-Fruitland) is sponsoring HB67, which would make up that funding loss with $6.6 million. He sponsored a similar bill that died in last year\u2019s legislative session.<\/p>\n

That funding would go towards covering salaries, travel and supplies. It would also allow health councils to contract with a nonprofit to provide training, technical assistance and help in creating an evaluation system.<\/p>\n

Currently, each council gets about $65,000 annually, and $50,000 of that comes from the federal government. If the bill doesn\u2019t pass, the councils will only receive $15,000 each.<\/p>\n

Alarc\u00f3n said about half of the councils, especially those in more populated areas, have access to outside funding that could help soften that blow, but the rest will have to make big cuts to their work.<\/p>\n

Source NM <\/a>is an independent, nonprofit news organization that shines a light on governments, policies and public officials. This coverage is made possible by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and KUNM listeners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Funding would go towards covering salaries, travel and supplies<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29689,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[61,138],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-29688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-health","tag-new-mexico"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29688"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=29688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}