Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra visited Reno to talk about access to health care in Latino, Tribal and rural communities.
On Dec. 15, Secretary Xavier Becerra made a stop in Reno to highlight the Biden administration’s efforts to lower health care costs, improve health equity and promote vaccination.
Becerra met with local Latino leaders and visited the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony Tribal Health Clinic for a closed roundtable discussion.
In conversation with KUNR, Becerra said Reno is a health care hub for some of the communities with smaller populations and farther away from large hospitals.
“If it’s tough in urban areas, where you have lots of doctors and they’re close by, it’s even more difficult in areas where the doctor could be 30 miles away, where you don’t have transportation, where you don’t get time off to go to see the doctor,” Becerra said.
The federal government is trying to increase the number of health care professionals in rural communities and to expand telemedicine services, he said.
“We’re trying to help locate health professionals in rural communities. So for example, the next time we have a slot for a teaching hospital to have a resident come in and learn how to do their practice, we want to see if we can do it in a place like Reno. So hopefully that person not only becomes a resident who studies medicine, but will become a doctor who stays in Reno after graduating,” Becerra said.
In addition to health care recruitment and retention, Becerra says culturally competent professionals and language assistance services are critical to equity in health care. As a son of immigrants and the first Latino to hold the office, Becerra has been an advocate for underserved communities.
“HHS is trying to push to get more doctors who look and sound like the people they’re going to treat in the communities,” Becerra said. “When I was growing up, I would become the translator, as a small child, for my parents when they would go visit doctors and other professionals. That’s not right. We need people who can understand and communicate with the people, especially in life and death circumstances as health care is.”
He also spoke about the need to ensure access to health care in Tribal lands.
HHS is the largest provider of health care in Indian Country in the nation, he said. They also support tribes that provide health care services on their own.
“We’re now trying to fight to make sure that Tribal communities have the resources they were guaranteed under the federal U.S. Constitution. And so we’re going to fight to make sure that Congress recognizes that tribes not only deserve but under the Constitution have a right to get the resources to provide health care to their people,” he said.
Becerra also addressed the need for people to receive the latest COVID vaccine that’s accessible to all.
