Massachusetts Public Health Association

MPHA's goal is to create health equity and healthy communities for everyone in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We do this by aligning our work with the overarching goals of dismantling structural racism, eliminating poverty, and integrating a health equity lens into all policies. As a result of our work, the Legislature and state agencies will adopt new policies and practices and will allocate additional funding to address the social conditions that drive health inequities. Key strategies include expanding access to healthy nutritious food, affordable public transportation, and safe affordable housing, while also promoting worker’s rights and economic justice, and assuring that health care delivery addresses health-related social needs (such as food, housing, violence, and transportation).

Additionally, the Legislature and the Department of Public Health will invest in creating a more effective, efficient, and equitable local public health system that provides strong public health protections for every resident, regardless of zip code. This will include establishing minimum public health standards for every community, ensuring a qualified local public health workforce, creating a uniform data collection and reporting system, and providing sustainable state funding for local public health departments.

To realize our vision, MPHA must address the most important drivers of health – the social and environmental conditions that exist in our communities. These include the quality of the housing that is available and affordable and protection from displacement for long term residents; the presence of food retailers offering fresh fruits and vegetables; and access to reliable public transportation that connects residents to jobs, educational opportunities, medical care, grocery stores and public services. What’s more, we must go deeper, to the root causes that result in those social conditions.

For example, we know that structural racism is a fundamental cause of health inequity in Massachusetts and the United States. Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic, combined with a series of horrifying cases of police brutality against Black Americans, has brought this reality into public consciousness. Never has MPHA’s goal of dismantling structural racism as a means to achieving health equity been more widely understood or supported, and we are working to capitalize on this opportunity to gain ground. Our Board has recently re-committed the organization to working both to dismantle structural racism and to lift up the voices of people most impacted by racism and other forms of oppression.

MPHA’s primary strategy for achieving our goals is to act as a coalition builder, bringing together local leaders, public officials, policy experts, activists, and community-based organizations to advance key public policy solutions. We listen carefully to our grassroots partners and strive to amplify the voices of those most impacted by health inequities. In many cases, we bring together organizations that have not collaborated in the past, but which can benefit from partnership. For example, we have recently convened healthcare leaders and affordable housing advocates to develop a shared strategy for addressing the affordable housing crisis in Massachusetts. We engage these individuals and groups in a collaborative process to identify important issues and set policy priorities, and then lead them in taking action to educate policy makers. MPHA utilizes its strengths as a coalition-builder and organizer to effect policy change that improves the health of all Massachusetts residents.

MPHA's Executive Director and four full-time program staff have more than 50 years of collective experience in advocacy, organizing, policy, and public health. These are supported by both a full-time development and a full time operations staff member, and part-time consultants focused on communications and on finance. MPHAs Board of Directors is exceptionally strong and comprised of made up of 20 members who are leaders in their fields and bring deep experience in public health, academia, healthcare, community health, community organizing, social service delivery, community development, financial management, and law. Our strong commitment to racial equity is borne out in our hiring and Board recruitment practices. More than 80% of MPHA's staff and 60% of MPHA's board identify as people of color.

In addition to our Board of Directors, our work guided by a 22-member Policy Council, representing all regions of Massachusetts with an emphasis on grass roots organizational membership. Members have expertise on a range of issues including: food systems, housing and homelessness, public transportation, environmental justice, public health, municipal government, policy development and advocacy, and more.

MPHA benefits from a strong network of partnerships with organizations across the state, from Western Massachusetts to Cape Cod. Our history of collaboration and convening nontraditional partners, and our intentional approach to credit sharing and consensus building, has earned us the trust and respect of a wide range of critical partner organizations working in a variety of fields, from food access and affordable housing to transportation, public health, healthcare, civil rights, and labor.

We are fortunate to have strong IT capabilities, including access to Zoom and the cloud. When the pandemic began, we found that all staff already had broadband Internet access at home, and we were able to pivot easily to a remote work model.

Over the past several years, MPHA has:
• Convened the Task Force on Coronavirus & Equity to make rapid policy recommendations regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic fallout. We passed the most comprehensive moratorium on evictions and foreclosures in the country. We also passed legislation requiring the collection and reporting of equity data for all COVID-19 infections and deaths, including race, ethnicity, and disability status.
• Supported police reform legislation, recently signed by the governor, to reduce police violence and its profound public health impacts on communities of color.
• Passed the State Action for Public Health Excellence (SAPHE) Bill, which begins implementation of the recommendations of the Special Commission on Local & Regional Public Health. It increases training for members of the local public health workforce and provides funding incentives to cities and towns to encourage the sharing of services across municipal boundaries.
• Organized the Regional Transit Authority Task Force, which successfully advocated for increased state funding for public transportation in cities across the state, and maintained that funding in subsequent years.
• Led the push for continued state funding for the Mass in Motion Program, which promotes opportunities for healthy eating and active living throughout the Commonwealth.
• Secured $1M in state capital dollars for the MA Food Trust Program (in 2018, 2019 and 2020), which provides loans and grants to local businesses to sell healthy and affordable food in areas with limited food access.
• Passed legislation creating the Massachusetts Food Trust Program (2016) to expand food access.
• Brought the voice of public health and consumer advocates to the table with MassHealth and others through the Alliance for Community Health Integration.
• Passed legislation to create a Special Commission on Local & Regional Public Health (2016).
• Passed the Active Streets Bill as part of the Transportation Bond Bill (2014), and secured commitment of $20M from MassDOT to implement the Complete Streets Program (2014).
• Established the $60M Prevention and Wellness Trust Fund (PWTF) in healthcare cost containment legislation.

MPHA’s priorities are chosen to have maximum impact on improving health, strengthening the organized constituency for public health, and reducing health inequities. Our current policy agenda includes:

• Advocating for effective and equitable measures to combat the spread of COVID-19 and to address the economic fallout of the pandemic.
• Addressing core social determinants of health: healthy affordable food, transportation equity, and access to quality, affordable housing.
• Strengthening municipal public health by passing the SAPHE 2.0 Bill.
• Leveraging changes in health care to impact the social determinants of health through work with Accountable Care Organizations and hospitals.
• Supporting funding for lead poisoning prevention and reauthorization of the Prevention & Wellness Trust.