In its second iteration, the Voices for Health Justice program embodies our commitment to authentic power building – the process of organizing and mobilizing marginalized communities to assert control over decisions that directly affect their lives. Voices 2.0 partners work as state-level coalitions, focusing not just on policy victories, but on building sustainable infrastructure for long-term power by deepening community relationships, growing collective leadership, and fostering self-determination within Black, Brown, Latinx and other historically excluded communities.
Our Voices for Health Justice 2.0 cohort of partners share what brings them joy and energy in their work.
Partner Spotlight: Hoosier Action
Indiana’s grassroots organizing landscape has undergone significant transformation since 2019, marked by an unprecedented shift from in-person organizing methods to rapid digital adaptation during the COVID-19 pandemic. With support from the Voices for Health Justice project, Hoosier Action leveraged multi-year, flexible funding to meet the moment and strengthen its health justice advocacy. They leveraged digital tools to dramatically expand their reach, deepen their impact, and build statewide power. This pivot enabled them to reach more Hoosiers than ever before while maintaining their commitment to addressing urgent community needs. The pandemic accelerated their development into a sophisticated statewide advocacy organization with increased capacity to influence policy and mobilize communities across Indiana.
Parent Voices Oakland (PVO) is a leading advocate for affordable, quality child care in California’s Bay Area. With support from the Voices for Health Justice project, PVO has built an innovative approach to organizing and relationship building that focuses on systemic change and ensures families have access to affordable, quality child care — fundamental components of health equity and community well-being. They developed a relational organizing model that centers the lived experiences of parents and providers, creates sustainable leadership development pathways, and achieves tangible policy wins while addressing the holistic needs of families.
Somos Un Pueblo Unido (Somos) is an immigrant-led organization in New Mexico advancing worker and racial justice through grassroots leadership, narrative strategy, and policy change. With support from the Voices for Health Justice program, Somos is building cross-movement power and demonstrating how immigrant workers—long excluded from economic and health systems—can organize for dignity, protection, and systemic change.
Through decades of grassroots leadership and leveraging strategic partnerships, Somos has become a statewide force for worker justice. The organization is founded on a core tenet that the people who power our economy deserve to thrive within it. Immigrant workers deserve health care, safety, dignity, and a voice to actively shape the systems they contribute to and are impacted by.
Our Voices for Health Justice 2.0 cohort of partners virtually celebrated their second year in this work with us. Focused on building power through care and community, learn from them how care shows up in their work.
State Coalitions
Through our work with over 100 partner organizations in 24 states across the country as part of this effort, we’ve created a shared national network. Partners say that being part of the Voices 2.0 project has helped them combine and scale their organizing and policy work, foster new relationships with other partners, and grow their capacity for state coalitions.
Explore Coalitions by State
This state’s organizations are separated into two coalitions.
Parent Voices Oakland is one chapter of a Statewide network of 17 chapters in different counties across California. PVO works with families to advocate for children and their communities by providing: education, information, and hands-on experiential leadership development opportunities. PVO believes, as a core value, that parents are the experts of their experiences – therefore essential to the policy making process.
CPEHN is a multi-ethnic network representing organizations serving millions of Californians. They bring together and build power in California’s diverse communities of color. As a network, they are a collective voice for racial justice, health equity and health care system reform.
The Colorado VHJ project builds and elevates Black community power in the health policy arena in Colorado. They are building deeper relationships, resource-sharing, training, and collective visioning across power building organizations and Black-led organizations. They are building a grassroots base of Black community leaders who are committed to transforming the health care system.
Spaces in Action is a grassroots, non-profit membership organization that fights for early childhood learning opportunities, health equity, climate justice, and racial/economic dignity for Black, Latinx, and immigrant communities in D.C.
Florida Voices for Health connects Floridians with others who are working to make healthcare more accessible and create opportunities to take action. They are focused on Medicaid expansion and tackling medical debt. Policy change can be tough in Florida’s political climate, but the depth of the need is helping to generate momentum.
ICIRR, WCRJ, Shriver and Everthrive have formed an intersectional organizing and policy collaborative to address the social determinates of health. We focus on increasing access to health care and reducing the root-cause economic factors that lead to a variety of negative public health outcomes in disinvested communities of color.
Hoosier Action is a homegrown, independent community organization dedicated to building power and improving the lives of everyday Hoosiers. Their members live across the state, but their deepest roots are in small town Southern Indiana, where their chapters lead the organization. Hoosier Action believes that by acting together, they can create an Indiana where all Hoosiers, Black, white, and brown, are able to shape the decisions that affect their lives.
The Kansas Breastfeeding Coalition works to promote and protect breastfeeding and human milk feeding to improve Kansas families’ health and well-being.
LACHON is an association for community health and outreach workers. Our mission is to support community health workers while advocating for improvements in community health. Our coalition over the time has and is continuing to build a great relationship. Working together to build power and advocacy skills, this is done through having webinars and other trainings.
All Means All is a Coalition of immigrant-led and allied organizations working together to expand access to Maine’s Medicaid program regardless of immigration status, and to build power among immigrant communities.
Our coalition is committed to ensuring that all Marylanders, regardless of immigration status, gain access to quality affordable healthcare. We do this by advocating for programs that increase access to health insurance and ensuring that high quality, locally oriented health centers, programs and services exist in communities to deliver the care to which that insurance expansion provides access.
Organizations Involved: CASA Empowerment for Collective Change
Healthcare For All (HCFA), the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA), and the Mass Senior Action Council (MSAC) collaborate to build the power of lower income seniors, particularly seniors in immigrant and BIPOC communities, to achieve legislative change to expand access to affordable health care and end long standing policies rooted in racism.
MOSES and their partner organizations are focused on serving disproportionately impacted communities of color, particularly Black communities in and around Detroit and other majority-Black areas of Michigan. They work on policy at the local, state, and sometimes federal levels with a shared goal of reducing health disparities by improving access to high quality, affordable, culturally appropriate care.
Mississippi Black Women’s Round Table is committed to ensuring Mississippi women, especially Black and Brown women, directly impacted by racial and gender inequity in health care have a voice in creating policies which impact their lives. Together with the impacted community, we will work to address the lack of access to quality and affordable health care by co-creating policies and advocacy solutions that aim to center the dignity of women of color in the health care system.
New Jersey Voices for Health Justice collaborates to address disparities in health care by increasing health care affordability, access, and equity to New Jerseyans.
The New Mexico Worker Organizing Collaborative (NMWOC) was formed in May of 2015 to enhance the economic security of families and increase racial equity by improving pay, benefits and protections for low wage workers. Our work is driven by power-building strategies including: community organizing, strategic communications, civic engagement, legislative advocacy and impact litigation.
Black Women’s Health Collective (BWHC) is a collective of Black individuals and organizations that are committed to creating beneficial and transformational health outcomes for Black women and girls. We are doing this by building a powerful network of parents, health practitioners, academic scholars and community members.
Ohio Organizing Collaborative (OOC) is the lead partner of the Ohio Healthy Voices Cohort. OOC is a grassroots people-centered power organization. We unite base-building community organizing groups, student associations and faith organizations, with labor unions, and policy institutes throughout Ohio. It is our mission to organize everyday Ohioans, building transformative power organizations for racial, social, and economic justice. Our vision is to build a democratic multi-racial populist governing coalition in Ohio.
GCC’s mission is to be a powerful force for change, creating justice and opportunity in Greater Cleveland by uniting faith communities and civic partners across lines of race, class, and religion.
The Oregon Heals Coalition is a statewide policy and advocacy coalition led by APANO, Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN) and Family Forward Oregon (FFO). We envision a robust Oregon mental health system that is equitable, affordable, culturally responsive, community-centered and community driven. We hope to create and foster community partnerships as we execute our long-term vision and goal.
Rhode Island Voices for Better Health is a ten-year partnership devoted to improving health care, long term care, and transportation for elders and adults with disabilities.
Black Health Matters-TN is dedicated to eradicating the legacy of racism in the healthcare system, eliminating racial health disparities, exterminating policies that devalue the health and lives of Black people, and elevating health equity as an urgent need for Tennesseans. We aim to do this through our four pillars of maternal health, increasing health access, medical debt, Medicaid expansion. To make this happen, we have a table of excellent partners that help guide our principles and work towards advocacy in these areas.
A coalition made up of organizations and individuals, working to help create and advocate for accessible and affordable quality health care for all Virginians.
This state’s organizations are separated into two coalitions.
Coalition 1: The Milwaukee County Health Equity Initiative
The Milwaukee County Health Equity Initiative aims to transform healthcare delivery and accessibility for BIPOC communities through a multi-pronged approach addressing workforce development, predatory business prevention, and healthcare access. By 2026, the project seeks to build capacity within the healthcare workforce to provide culturally responsive care, implement systemic changes to prevent predatory institutions like the Arizona College of Nursing from exploiting vulnerable populations, and enact legislation to prevent healthcare deserts. The initiative leverages community voice, institutional partnerships, and policy advocacy to create sustainable improvements in health outcomes for marginalized communities.
Voices for Health Justice Milwaukee is a community-driven coalition led by the African American Roundtable, MICAH, and Embolden WI that addresses health inequities affecting BIPOC communities in Milwaukee. The initiative centers community voices, particularly from Milwaukee’s North Side, while holding health systems accountable through grassroots organizing. Key activities include developing and compensating 10 community leaders and 20 resident leaders, monthly coalition meetings, and responding to healthcare access threats like the Next Door Pediatrics closure.
