VIDEO: Harder Pushes Central Valley Health Care Priorities During Critical Hearing

WASHINGTON — Today, Representative Josh Harder (CA-10) pushed his Central Valley health care priorities during a critical House Appropriations Committee hearing. In the hearing, Rep. Harder highlighted his solutions to address the doctor shortage in the Central Valley, connect marginalized communities with the health care system, and expand access to mental health care.

The full video is available for use here

Read his full remarks below:

I've spent the last few months on a listening tour across my district and health care is consistently one of the top concerns I hear from just about everyone. There are 2 specific problems I'd like to bring to the Committee's attention today and propose my solutions.

The first issue is access to care. To give you a sense of how bad it is in my district, when our ICU capacity was at 0% during the peak of COVID, it wasn't because we didn't have enough beds, it was because we didn't have enough doctors and nurses. People are waiting months to see specialists, and then when they finally do get an appointment, they have to drive hours to their appointment. If we truly believe in expanding healthcare access, we need to include diverse agricultural communities like mine.

The second issue is specifically about access to mental health services. I won't sugarcoat it - we are in a crisis situation in my district. It is tearing up our families and it all comes back to access to care. My district has almost half the amount of mental health providers as the rest of our state. And to paint the picture of my state - the largest mental health provider is the LA County Jail. Our system is terribly broken, and we need to fix it fast.

So, I'm here today to advocate for what I see as commonsense, impactful solutions. I'm not proposing a pie in the sky, Hail Mary type fix here. I'm talking about a few key things we can do this year to make physical and mental health care accessible for our community.

First, let's fix the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. It was created 15 years ago to encourage doctors to serve the communities just like mine. It says that if you work in a non-profit hospital for 10 years in an area with a shortage of doctors like California's Central Valley, we'll forgive your student loans. That just makes sense.

But that doesn't happen in California or Texas right now. Because of an accidental oversight in the program's language, doctors in my community aren't eligible for student loan forgiveness. When the average med student has more than $250,000 in debt, that's a major deterrent to practicing in the Valley. Just fixing this one oversight would bring 10,000 new doctors to underserved areas like mine.

Secondly, we also have to make sure practitioners are getting into our underserved communities of color. We need to fund programs like the Community Health Outreach Worker Program. In the Valley we call these incredible folks the Promotores - they're Spanish speaking professionals who use their community know-how to connect families to the services they need. I'm proposing an effort to effectively double the number of full-time staff in the Promotores Program. It would allow this highly successful program to expand their partnerships with local schools, so we help kids and their parents early-on before a one-time issue becomes a lifelong health battle. We know this model works, now we need to invest in it.

To tackle mental health care access, I have two projects that would make a world of difference for my community. The first is supporting a nonprofit in my district, First Behavioral Health Urgent Care Center, which serves everyone who walks through their doors, regardless of if they can pay. This project will help hire new, bilingual staff including a behavioral health clinician, and kick start new programming to fight the stigma attached to mental health. This funding will help the non-profit serve almost 1,000 new folks each year, largely from underserved Hispanic and youth populations.

The second project tackles the joint emergencies of mental health and homelessness. The Mental Health Residential Facilities Bed Shortage Regional Partnership would bring together our local counties to address the significant shortage of mental health treatment beds for anyone experiencing a mental health crisis or homelessness. We'll put together a needs assessment program and, if we find the amount of need our leaders expect, work toward establishing a new residential mental health facility in the Central Valley.

There's no silver bullet to solving our healthcare emergency overnight. But I strongly believe that these four programs would be a huge step forward for my community. Thank you again to Chairwoman DeLauro and her staff for working with me on these initiatives. I stand ready to do everything in my power to make them happen.

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