Make the Road New York is working on a number of fronts, and in a number of ways, to improve health outcomes for all New Yorkers:

Demanding, and Winning, Translation Services at Hospitals
Since Make the Road New York first brought attention to the illegal lack of translation services at New York City hospitals in 2002, we’ve made tremendous progress:

• Working with both the Attorney General’s office and five New York City hospitals, we negotiated agreements that will dramatically improve healthcare for over 1.5 million Limited English Proficient New Yorkers.
• We built on that success by working in coalition at the state level–all New York hospitals are now mandated to provide skilled translators, appoint language coordinators, and identify a patient's primary language on medical records.

Millions of New Yorkers no longer face fear, confusion or discrimination when they go to the hospital. Also, costly and often life-threatening medical mistakes due to doctor/patient miscommunication will be substantially reduced.

Confronting a Health Crisis: Asthma
With groups from around the city, we spearheaded the passage of The Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Act in 2004, the strongest lead poisoning legislation in the country. Building on that victory, we are now confronting the asthma epidemic in the Bushwick community. Bushwick has the highest rate of child hospitalization for asthma in Brooklyn, and four times the citywide average rate. Exposure to dust, mold, mildew, rodent infestation, bedbugs, cockroaches, and pesticides is exacerbated by poor housing conditions rampant in Bushwick.

Make the Road New York spearheaded a collaborative research project, with the Department of Health and Wyckoff Heights Medical Center, that produced a report entitled "Fighting to Breathe: Asthma in Bushwick", which documented the high incidence of severe asthma and of indoor asthma triggers in Bushwick.

As part of this process, we spoke to more than 300 community residents who suffer from asthma and found:

• 69% of asthmatics reported having cockroaches in their homes
• 67% reported excessive dust in their homes
• 47% reported rat or mouse infestation in their homes
• 30% reported the presence of mold in their homes

As a result, Make the Road New York convened the first citywide collaborative in New York City to address indoor asthma allergens and the current housing code. The initiative plans to make recommendations to the city’s housing code enforcement agency to improve their understanding and ability to mitigate indoor asthma triggers.

Ensuring Full Access to Healthcare Benefits
During 2005, our healthcare specialists conducted an average of one "Know Your Rights" workshop per week at libraries, places of worship, and community organizations throughout Brooklyn, Queens and parts of Manhattan. Through these workshops, over 1,000 New Yorkers learned to exercise their rights in interactions with healthcare and health insurance providers -- institutions which all too often unjustly deny families urgently needed care due to misunderstandings, lack of translation services, exploitative billing practices, or erroneous denials of approval for necessary procedures or medications.

We also supported dozens of families per month with individual casework and representation, helping them to get needed medical treatment, obtain health insurance for which they are eligible, and navigate complex hospital and healthcare systems in order to protect the lives and health of themselves and their families. Our representation includes filing grievances with managed care companies and representing Medicaid recipients in Fair Hearings. One of the single biggest causes of personal bankruptcy is healthcare-related debt -- our staff helps New Yorkers get access to free or low-cost healthcare, obtain insurance, and otherwise avoid, reduce or eliminate debilitating debt.

Covering the Basics: Make the Road New York’s Food Pantry
Our legal services work addresses key income disruptions that keep families in poverty: in particular, exploitative, sub-minimum-wage employment and unstable public benefits streams. Our food pantry provides subsistence basics for our clients and other neighborhood residents while we work with them to find longer term pathways out of poverty. Every Friday morning, Make the Road New York distributes 125 full grocery bags to families and individuals in need. In 2005, our food pantry provided 4653 bags of nutritious emergency food supplies — enough to feed over 16,000 adults and children and a 260% increase over the prior year.

Expanding Civil Rights | Promoting Health | Improving Housing | Winning Workplace Justice | Improving Public Education