Michael Cunningham with Keys AHEC joined Good Morning Keys this morning on KeysTalk 96.9/102.7FM to talk about what’s going on in the program.
Keys AHEC health centers provide access to no cost medical care for students in the district and low cost dental care.
Cunningham said, “We started 12 years ago, actually, we were working with then principal Axford from Sugarloaf School on her way to becoming superintendent, but she came to us and I was actually serving as chairman of the board for Fisherman’s Hospital at the time, and she had approached us to the fact that there were a number of students and families who simply did not have access to health care. And she asked what we could do to address this? It seemed simple at the time to put a couple of nurse practitioners in various schools and we started out doing that again, 12 years ago, and currently we have seven nurse practitioners covering 10 of our public schools. But we do serve all public school kids, private school, Charter School, home schooled kids. So anyone who’s a student in Monroe County can make access to one of our 10 clinics, county wide, Key Largo through Key West, and can be seen at no cost. Then four years ago, we had been doing a dental sealant project, and we had noticed that there was a large number of kids who needed dental care, and unfortunately, there was no place for them to go. So we ended up putting together our mobile dental unit, which was running three days a week and after about six months, we were booked up for an additional six months. So we opened up the Marathon Health Center here for dental and then in a couple of weeks, we’ll probably make a formal announcement that we’re going to be opening up a one room dental office at HOB School. So we’ll be getting that equipment ready here at the office, and then we’ll be transporting that down there in about another week, and then we’ll open there as well.”
The funding can be a major issue, especially in these times of cutbacks.
Cunningham said, “The non profits here in Monroe County, instead of going directly to the county commission for support, go through the Human Services Advisory Board, and that board has historically had about 2.2 million. They receive applications and there’s about 30 entities that apply for those dollars, and then they will make an award and a recommendation to the BOCC and with some of the DOGE initiatives, there is the belief that there are unnecessary non governmental organizations that should be reduced and potentially even cut out. When we look at the executive order from the governor, and we look at the President’s executive order, and we study that, we’re just not really seeing where this fits in. Maybe somebody from the governor’s office has put out this information, but we just haven’t seen it. Then when we look at this and we understand that they need to eliminate unnecessary and inappropriate funding. We completely agree with that. But there’s also things that are defined as discretionary, and certain things that they’re not looking to cut and that includes public safety. Under public safety comes public health, and under public health comes primary care, maternal and child health, mental health and substance abuse, and disease prevention and vaccines. We believe that we really fall underneath that as an essential service, which should be given some consideration. We understand we may have to take a bit of a hit, but 50% and or elimination seems really kind of unnecessary at this point. I think that there still needs to be the HSAB, but maybe we need to look at what are essential services, and what they truly can support, and what the actual language does and does not support and that’s going to be handled by the county team, our BOCC members, to really doing a deep dive into it to see what they can do, and maybe they need to restructure that process a bit. But for those that are providing what we would consider essential health or essential human services, maybe that cut should be a whole lot less. We’ve been working to try to lessen that blow this upcoming year to maybe just at the 25% level and then we can see what happens through this process this year, to see what would be appropriate, if at all next year.”
If it stands at the 50% reduction, what kind of impact will that have on Keys AHEC?
Cunningham said, “That’s another $100,000 approximately we would take a hit for, along with some other reductions, and we’re trying to do some fundraising to fill that gap, but we would have no choice other than to start to shut down clinics, provide less services to the students of Monroe County, and start laying off staff. Once you do that, then it’s hard to bring those services and programs back. So ultimately, the children of our county are the ones who are going to suffer.”
How many agencies would be affected if this cut to HSAB stands?
Cunningham said, “I believe the ’25, ‘26 list that’s out there includes about 30 different agencies and they provide various services. So again that board, as well as our commission has a lot of hard decisions to make, and maybe some restructuring to how they want to support this program. The County Commission has two more budget meetings. We as the nonprofit groups have gotten together and spoke and we’re writing to all of them, getting our board members, community members, to express support for a lesser cut moving forward, and then we can deal with next year, once we have a little bit more information on what’s happening at the federal and state level. But we’re going to be at the next two meetings, advocating for our position, and hopefully, we’re making sense to them, and this is a logical step.”
If they were to restore HSAB funding, how would that work?
Cunningham suggested, “They may be able to do it within their current budget. I know that they spoke about a small millage increase that they passed last time. So they would work with the budget team to look internally, of course, and then see where they could potentially do some cost shifting and if they’re going to do this millage increase, how they’re going to utilize that, whether it’s for FEMA reserves or just where. There’s a quite a bit of work to do. But they’ve got a really talented team at the county, and I’m sure they can come up with the solution. We just need to keep the communication going with our county team, and hopefully, in the end, everything works out the way it should. All the teams here are all the HSAB members and the nonprofits, we’re working diligently to making sure that we can continue on as best as possible.”
For more information, click here: https://keysahec.org/