Alliance Advocacy Center

Our Advocacy Priorities

Add $5 million in the State Budget for SBHCs Negotiations on the 2022-23 proposed State Budget are heating up! Now is the time to restore funding levels for SBHCs to keep them operating and sustainable! SBHC sponsoring organizations had non-Medicaid grants funds disproportionately reduced in 2017 due a 20% across the board cut in the final 2017-18 State budget; and 27 SBHC sponsors saw additional cuts ranging from 25% to 70% of total non-Medicaid grant funds due to a distribution methodology change that same year. That’s why it’s critical that you call your State Senate and Assembly representatives in Albany this week to ask them to add $5 million in funds for School-Based Health Centers in this year's State budget. Click on the Budget Alert - Talking Points button above for talking points on this advocacy priority.

Keep SBHCs Carved Out of Managed Care! SBHCs have been carved out of Medicaid Managed Care, permanently, since 1985 and we'd like them to remain carved out. A09288/S08447 is new legislation amending the social services law, in relation to coverage for services provided by school-based health centers and allows them to remain carved out of Medicaid Managed Care permanently. See NYSBHA's support memo in the button above, and additional support memos from GNYHA and NYSUT in NYSBHA's News at nysbha.org/news.

NYSBHA Also Supports

Increased investments in Medicaid rates supported by the Greater NY Hospital Association: While the State intended to provide a one-time 2% trend factor increase for hospitals and a 1.5% increase for nursing homes in 2018, those increases were more than wiped out by the 1.5% cut the Executive budget would restore. While we strongly support eliminating the 1.5% cut, this merely brings us back to payment amounts from early 2020, prior to the pandemic. Therefore, hospitals and nursing homes have had no true Medicaid rate inflation increases since 2008. GNYHA supports increasing the 1% for hospitals and nursing homes to keep pace with current inflation and to make up for 14 years of no inflation updates.

Extended (Delayed) SBHC's Carved-Out Medicaid Managed Care

The final Article VII Health and Mental Hygiene budget bill, provides that services provided in SBHCs shall not be provided to medical assistance recipients through managed care programs until at least April 1, two thousand twenty-three.
See Health and Mental Hygiene Article VII budget bill (S2507-C/A3007-C), page 40, Part JJ, attached, for additional details.

New York's SBHCs 2021-2022 Budget Win!

School- Based Health Centers have received full funding from the Executive as well as a $3, 824,000 legislative add in the NYS 2021-2022 State Budget! The total amount of funding is at the same level as SFY 2020-21.
SBHCs will maintain the $17,098,000 in funds provided in the 2021-2022 proposed State Executive Budget.

Interested in advocating for New York’s SBHCs? Use our sbhc-legislator match list to see representative by sbhc address or use the Assembly and Senate buttons below.

NYSBHA's Legislative Center

Find your Assembly Member

Follow the button and input your street address and zip code to find your New York State Assembly Representative.

Visit your Assembly member’s page and locate the “Contact Me” button on the left to gather the phone numbers, email address, and contact form for your Assembly Member.

Find your Senator

Follow the button and input your street address and zip code to find your New York State Senator.

Click the button “Message Senator” and follow site instructions to create and account and send your Senator a message.

See Our SBHC/Legislator Match List!

Use the link to the right to see NYSBHA’s current sbhc directory and corresponding legislator list to find the right representative.

For any further questions or concerns regarding advocacy, contact us at: nysbha@gmail.com

Youth Advocacy

NYSBHA looks forward to a post-pandemic start to this project!