Two big steps in caring for Tampa Bay’s needy | Editorial
Migrant health clinic. Newton’s laws of motion hold that for every action there’s a reaction — which brings us to Nancy Hernandez. The founder of the local nonprofit Mujeres Restauradas por Dios, or Women Restored by God, is taking her charitable work another step in response to what Florida lawmakers passed and hailed this year as one of the toughest crackdowns on illegal immigration in the nation. Senate Bill 1718 requires, among other things, that hospitals accepting Medicaid inquire about a patient’s immigration status. While the information cannot be used to deny care, or result in a referral to immigration authorities, merely asking the question will scare many immigrants away. That fear is already spreading by word-of-mouth in Florida’s immigrant communities, and activists worry it will keep people from seeking needed medical care. So Hernandez is planning to open a community health center to provide free and basic medical services to those who are uninsured and vulnerable. The clinic would be housed in the same building where she works on Nebraska Avenue in Tampa’s Seminole Heights neighborhood. She has collected $40,000 from private donors and expects to operate with primary care providers who will donate their time. Similar efforts are underway in heavily-Hispanic areas of south and east Hillsborough County. This is a humane, practical response to a Republican-led policy in Florida that has real-life implications.
Call the counselors. St. Petersburg City Council members did right by the public and police by renewing a promising program aimed at helping people in emotional crisis. The council Thursday approved a three-year renewal and expansion of a mental health unit that sends social workers instead of uniformed officers on some nonviolent calls. Begun in 2021, the unit responds to calls involving mental health crisis, overdoses, neighborhood disputes and other lower-level cases. The idea is that social workers may appear less threatening than uniformed officers and more capable of de-escalating tensions in certain situations. In the program’s first nine months, social workers responded to more than half of the city’s police calls in which no crime was committed, a University of South Florida study found, with no injuries reported from 9,000 encounters. This is a smart approach that directly addresses mental health while sparing police resources for greater threats to public safety. And the cost, which will grow to about $1.7 million annually from $1.3 million, is peanuts in the overall budget picture. The city will use the increased funding to expand the program’s daily operating hours and to hire additional staff. USF can further contribute by monitoring the program’s strengths and weaknesses in the coming years. This is how local institutions should work together in furthering the common good.
Editorials are the institutional voice of the Tampa Bay Times. The members of the Editorial Board are Editor of Editorials Graham Brink, Sherri Day, Sebastian Dortch, John Hill, Jim Verhulst and Chairman and CEO Conan Gallaty. Follow @TBTimes_Opinion on Twitter for more opinion news.
