New Mexico Alliance of Health Councils Executive Director Valeria Alarcón and Tana Beverwyk-Abouda, the coordinator of the Rio Arriba Community Health Council, are shown at the New Mexico Legislature on Feb. 18, 2025. (Photo by Austin Fisher / Source NM)
In the final weeks of the legislative session, groups in New Mexico devoted to public health in local communities are hoping state lawmakers will boost funding for their work, which they say is largely being done by volunteers.
Health councils exist in all 33 New Mexico counties, along with 10 tribal nations in the state. They are the lifeline to meeting public health needs in underserved communities such as rural areas and border towns, said New Mexico Alliance of Health Councils Executive Director Valeria Alarcón.
House Bill 75 would set aside $43 million to pay for health council staff, start new councils in more areas, and increase public health intervention, prevention and education efforts.
Alarcón said the $43 million would be the optimal amount of funding for health councils, because it would allow new ones to form in the 50 Navajo Nation chapter houses, the nine remaining Pueblos and the two Apache nations.
In the 2024 session, lawmakers gave health councils a one-time $3.6 million appropriation, translating to approximately $80,000 per health council for the current fiscal year.
HB75 passed House Government, Elections and Indian Affairs in early February and the House Appropriations and Finance Committee tabled it on Feb. 25.
Before HB75 was tabled, Alarcón said her organization was asking for at least $10 million to keep the existing councils running and add new ones in the Pueblos of Pojoaque, Zia and Zuni.
The Senate could still include the money for health councils in the FY2026 budget, which is expected to be finalized next week. Alarcón said on Wednesday she wants the Senate Finance Committee to include a much smaller amount, $3.6 million, in the budget.
“We have strong support in Senate Finance, but so far no one has taken a stand and submitted the request,” she said.
Alarcón said given the unprecedented uncertainty around federal funding for Medicaid, local health councils are well positioned to act as the connective tissue for public health in New Mexico.
“God forbid something happens there, how are we going to pull it together and get the resources to the community?” she said. “I think this is where health councils are already a strong partner that can be further leveraged.”
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In interviews with Source NM, members of two health councils in different parts of New Mexico both said transportation is an important public health issue in their communities, but each has their own specific needs.
Tana Beverwyk-Abouda, the coordinator of the Rio Arriba Community Health Council in Northern New Mexico, said the Rio Arriba health council splits up its work among “action teams” based on the social determinants of health, recognizing that people are complex, and so are the places where they live.
For example, the council’s Food Action Team is led by Kristen Trujillo, who also directs the San Martin de Porres Soup Kitchen in Española, where she cooks and distributes the food.
But to reach the soup kitchen when the food is served, Beverwyk-Abouda said, people need transportation, good weather and, if they are homeless, a place nearby to sleep the night before. If someone without transportation lives in an outlying village like Coyote or Cordova, for example, they’re not going to be able to get food at the soup kitchen, she said.
So the health council covers some of the cost of gas paid by volunteers to pick up food from the Food King in Española, take it to a community center in town,box it up and then drive the boxes to other parts of the county. Those drivers are using their personal vehicles, Beverwyk-Abouda said.
“You need to have a truck, you need to have a trailer, you need to have all these supports that, if unfunded, are simply untenable to do,” Beverwyk-Abouda said. “We already have people in the communities who are working their butts off, who are getting burnt out just by their regular job, and then we ask them to volunteer to do other things.”
With the food packaged, health council members distribute it, Beverwyk-Abouda said.
“That wouldn’t happen without the health council — there wouldn’t have been the coordination to figure out where the food needs to get, and there would be funding for the food,” she said.
Dr. Carolyn Morris, a psychologist and member of the health council for the To’Hajiilee Navajo Chapter west of Albuquerque — the Canoncito Band of Navajos Health Center, Inc — said the area has many high-risk patients, from newborn children to elders, who struggle to meet their basic needs. They use state funding to help people get food, water, clothing and traditional healing, she said.
“Luckily, with the small amount of money we get, we make sure that we spend it on the patients,” Morris said. “There’s not enough money to go around, so we have to just spread our resources and do the best that we can.”
It can be difficult for people in the community to earn money to meet their basic needs because of a lack of jobs in the area, she said, with most people relying on rides from relatives to reach Albuquerque for jobs in the service industry.
Morris also visits the local teen center alongside a primary care provider, a nurse and others, where they provide treatment and education to children.
After several people died from fentanyl overdoses, the health council has been educating people about how to reduce harm from the drug and handing out the opioid overdose reversing drug naloxone — commonly known by its brand name Narcan.
They also held several meetings to educate people about the 988 crisis line, and they invite anyone to make a presentation to and work alongside the health council, Morris said.
The Rio Arriba health council, like every other one, decided to start doing this work because it was highlighted as a priority in an assessment of the local health needs, Beverwyk-Abouda said. The last one was conducted in 2023. Alarcón said those assessments inform the Department of Health’s statewide health improvement plan, which is one of the things the state agency needs to be accredited.
The most recent To’Hajiilee assessment prioritizes building a new wellness center where people could gather to cook food and for young people to play basketball, Morris said. Other priorities include dentistry, medication-assisted treatment, Morris said.
The Rio Arriba health council’s most recent assessment was funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Alarcón said.
A $2.25 billion grant from CDC allowed health councils across the country to mitigate COVID-19’s effects. But the grant dried up last May as part of the state and federal government’s dismantling of its response to the COVID pandemic.
“Health councils are their community, they know their community, they know where the needs are very intimately,” Alarcón said.
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