Community Leaders Sustained Efforts For Over Two Decades To Win Federal Health Care Access for 100,000 Pacific Islanders
A recording of the briefing is available here.
Honolulu, Hawai’i; Portland, Oregon; Springdale, Arkansas - This week Pacific Islander community leaders celebrated and recounted their efforts to permanently restore Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) eligibility to people living in the United States under the Compacts of Free Association (COFA). Leaders shared how decades of coalition building and organized advocacy by a dispersed diaspora spread across North America and the Pacific Ocean overcame monumental bureaucratic and political indifference to secure this victory for their people.
The community leaders released a short video, A Long Fight For The Good Of Mankind, at the beginning of the event that shared the history of their fight. The video title refers to the words of Commodore Ben H. Wyatt, the military governor of the Marshalls, who in 1946 approached residents of Bikini Island to temporarily leave their atoll so that the U.S. could test atom bombs for “the good of mankind and to end all world wars.” The temporary departure turned into a decades-long odyssey for the people of the Marshall Islands, which includes Bikini. From 1946 to 1958, the United States tested nuclear weapons at 39 sites across the Freely Associated States (Federated States of Micronesia, Republic of the Marshall Islands and Republic of Palau) exposing the citizens of these nations to nuclear fallout and making many of the atolls uninhabitable to this day.
Under COFA, citizens from the Freely Associated States are able to travel to the United States without visas and initially had access to Medicaid and CHIP coverage to address the known health issues connected to exposure to nuclear fallout. In 1996, Congress removed health coverage for COFA citizens purportedly due to a drafting error, and the communities have been fighting for nearly 25 years to reclaim their health coverage.
The communities’ organized advocacy efforts grew over the decades, but even with a sympathetic Obama Administration the drafting error was never fixed in Congress. Since arriving in the Senate in 2013, Senator Mazie Hirono introduced legislative language almost yearly but saw each effort fall short. With the split Congress, the community leaders made a strategic effort to win over key Republican legislators in states with high concentrations of COFA communities, such as the area around Springdale, Arkansas, which has the largest Marshallese population outside of the Marshall Islands. Congressman Steve Womack became a key legislative champion after a stirring office visit by Fressana Lawin who recounted the origins of her grandmother’s thyroid cancers - she had tried to eat the magical snowfall coming down on her tropical island, only to find out later that this was radioactive fallout.
The power of advocates’ stories cut across partisan lines and created a pathway for a dispersed constituency with little in the way of voting power to secure an unlikely legislative victory, piggybacking onto a juggernaut relief bill with the help of bipartisan legislative champions in both houses of Congress.
Kaselel Counseling & Consultation
“As a child of the diaspora, I make a lot of decisions based on my elders and ancestors. I know that I am far from where my elders called home, but now I’m in my home [in America.] And in my home, I will not be treated like a guest and neither will my family. We belong here and we have rights!”
- Angela Edward, Founder, Michigan
We Are Oceania
“Health Equity is a responsibility of the government for its people... We Micronesian people had come to live in the United States as a right under the Compact of Free Association. With this right we had been doing our responsibilities as residents by working and paying taxes. The restoration of Medicaid is not just a step closer to health equity for us but a restoration of our faith and hope in this relationship.”
- Josie Howard, Executive Director, Hawai’i
Micronesian Coalition
“We have neighbors to bless, children to protect, the poor to lift up, and the truth to defend, wrong to make right, truths to share, and good to do."
- Terry Mote, Founder, Oklahoma
Dubuque Pacific Islander Health Project
" My hope is that one day the U.S. will pay their full debt for the destruction of our homes. We still have a long way to go, so many things we need to fight for."
- Maitha Jolet, Cultural Program Coordinator, Dubuque Pacific Islander Health Project, Iowa
Utah Micronesia Community
“ and when my time is up, have I done enough? Will they tell my story?”
- Cassidy Matthew, COFA Advocate, Utah
Arkansas Coalition of Marshallese (AR)
Pacific Leadership Assistance Network (National)
COFA Alliance National Network (National)
Marshallese COVID-19 Task Force (AR)
COFA Alliance National Network Arizona (AZ)
Hawaii Marshallese COVID-19 Task Force (HI)
Kokua Kalihi Valley Comprehensive Family Services (HI)
Marshallese Community Organization of Hawaii (HI)
Micronesian Health Advisory Coalition (HI)
We Are Oceania (HI)
Dubuque Pacific Islander Health Project (IA)
Kaselel Counseling & Consultation, PLLC (MI)
Springfield Marshallese Community (MO)
Micronesian Coalition in Oklahoma (OK)
COFA Alliance National Network Texas (TX)
Utah Marshallese Association (UT)
Utah Micronesian Coalition (UT)
COFA Alliance National Network Washington (WA)
Marshallese Women’s Association (WA)
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