Medi-Cal: California Has a Rare Opportunity to Improve Health Care Equity
Wealthy Californians come from affluent enclaves to take vaccine shots meant for at-risk frontline workers. In the same state but a world away, Californians haven’t heard that a safe, effective COVID-19 vaccine exists because the news hasn’t yet reached them in their language.
Unequal access to quality health care allowed the virus to cut a path of devastation through communities of color over the past year. Like the murder of George Floyd and acts of violence that sparked a national reckoning on race last year, inequalities in health care are rooted in a set of rules stacked against Black and brown communities.
To heal, we must rewrite the rules. One big place to start is Medi-Cal.
To continue reading, visit the Sacramento Bee, which published this op-ed today.
Sandra R. Hernández, MD, is president and CEO of the California Health Care Foundation. Prior to joining CHCF, Sandra was CEO of The San Francisco Foundation, which she led for 16 years. She previously served as director of public health for the City and County of San Francisco. She also cochaired San Francisco’s Universal Healthcare Council, which designed Healthy San Francisco. It was the first time a local government in the US attempted to provide health care for all of its constituents.
In February 2018, Sandra was appointed by Governor Jerry Brown to the Covered California board of directors. In December 2019, she was appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom to the Healthy California for All Commission, which is charged with developing a plan to help California achieve a health care delivery system that provides coverage and access through a unified financing system. She also serves on the UC Regents Health Services Committee and the UC San Diego Chancellor’s Health Advisory Board and on the board of the company 23andMe. Sandra practiced at San Francisco General Hospital in the HIV/AIDS Clinic from 1984 to 2016 and was an assistant clinical professor at the UCSF School of Medicine.
Sandra is a graduate of Yale University, the Tufts School of Medicine, and the certificate program for senior executives in state and local government at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.