In the spring of 2004, six convening partners joined together to plan the MIRACLE Campaign, a coordinated effort to restore primary and preventive health programs to legally residing immigrants in Massachusetts. The original conveners included: The Public Policy Institute (PPI), the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA); the Voice and Future Fund, the 501(c) (3) partner of SEIU 615, the Latin American Health Institute (LHI), Health Care For All (HCFA) and The Massachusetts Law Reform Institute (MLRI).

Individually, and sometimes together the partners had worked extensively with immigrant populations over a number of years on many different issues. However, until a series of exceedingly punitive budget cuts to state health and human service programs that included cutting health care for 10,000 immigrants, the partners had neither the time nor resources to focus and coordinate their efforts on the issue of health care for immigrants.

For instance, during the last budget cycle, the individual organizations had worked tirelessly with key stakeholders to restore health benefits for this population. Rounds of legislative and administration meetings and briefings, press events and other public demonstrations were held to highlight the importance of restoring primary and preventive health care benefits to these deserving residents of the Commonwealth.

Ultimately the Legislature was persuaded to restore health care coverage for approximately 3,000 senior and disabled immigrants with a $4M funding stream. Unfortunately, the Administration vetoed this section of the budget, reduced the funding to $2M and offered an amendment that set up a very restrictive system of care provision based on the financial abilities of immigrant sponsors, known as sponsor deeming. This system resulted in the Office of Medicaid releasing emergency regulations around sponsor-deeming requiring the elderly and disabled to fill out difficult to understand forms and causing fear and panic among this population over what the true intent of forms really was.

Today, most legally residing immigrants remain without care (see MassHealth Campaign Timeline for more information).

The Public Policy Institute took the lead in coordinating a planning process to design a partnership campaign to restore health care to legally qualified immigrants with the help of a planning grant from The Boston Foundation.

The basic assumption was that the collaborating partners would be able to interact within the course of their own work and as a result create a voice that would be much more effective than the sum of its parts. The primary goal was, and still is, to engage and mobilize a diverse network of community-based immigrant civic organizations, health and social service providers, labor leaders, advocacy organizations, the faith community, adult basic educators and small and large employers towards the goal of fully restoring health care to legally residing immigrants. In the course of achieving this goal, the MIRACLE campaign vowed to: recruit new partners and build relationships with other organizations and networks with a mission driven and/or direct self-interest in legal immigrants gaining access to quality affordable health services and prevention programs; attempt to prevent further cuts; and direct the development of culturally-appropriate materials to be used in all facets of the campaign.

For more information on the MIRACLE Campaign, please contact us at miracle@realclout.org.