Hartford - Fight Back Committee Campaign Launch: "Access to Health Without Barriers"

On October 5th, 2022, Make the Road Connecticut (MRCT) and members of the Fight Back committee launched a campaign focusing on accessing better services and quality health care among hospitals and clinics in Hartford, addressing the health inequalities such as improvement to the interpretation services including a phone system in the first 5 major languages spoken in the city, multicultural sensibility education, and accessibility to automated information on resources in the local community and state in the areas of mental health, oral health, vision, laboratories, and more.

Campaigners held a rally at Bernard Park where impacted community members shared their personal stories and continued to march to the Hartford Hospital where they laid out their demands and shared testimonies and health experiences related to the challenges they faced when seeking health care in hospitals and clinics in Hartford.

Many immigrants are unable to regularly access health care due to the difficulties of obtaining health insurance in Connecticut. In the limited instances when they do have access, the quality of care they receive is poor with limited to no interpretation services, multicultural sensitivity practices, and complicated inaccessible financial assistance programs. Insufficient language access or uncertified interpretation affects care. In the absence of an accessible financial assistance program, low-income patients are discouraged from seeking medical care.

Luz Cardenas, MRCT member leader: “To me, it is important to win this campaign because my health is at risk. I need medical care for my vision in order to not go blind, but the medical procedure is too expensive, the care I previously received has been poor and what could have been a small medical problem exacerbated into a larger medical need due to negligence. I want the following generations to not have to experience what I went through, we deserve better.”

Victor Sanchez, MRCT member leader: “This campaign is very important to me because I suffer from medical conditions and I have had several experiences in hospitals, both in terms of the service and the medications that are prescribed, apart from the studies that have been carried out on me, they are very expensive, although I have the clinic discount, that's why I'm here so that we all have the same rights that are equal for all people regardless of immigration status or because they don't have insurance.”

A list of full demands can be found here.

Thanks to all our wonderful members who support us every day in our fight for a better future.