PBN: Future of R.I.’s health equity zones unclear amid funding gap

In 2015, Rhode Island pioneered the Health Equity Zone Initiative, a community-focused program meant to help fill gaps in health care. But now the initiative’s future is hazy as it’s facing a funding gap.

The initiative is facilitated by the R.I. Department of Health, with the support of the R.I. Executive Office of Health and Human Services, and has expanded to include 15 health equity zones throughout the state. Each zone represents a different geographic area and is anchored by a backbone organization that serves as an administrative hub. Health equity zones are tasked with identifying their community’s unique health care needs and bringing organizations together to create programs to address them.

Over the last five fiscal years, almost two-thirds of the initiative’s funds – around $26 million of the $39.6 million budgeted – came from COVID-19 relief grants and other federal funds, with another 2.5% coming from general revenue, according to a RIDOH issue brief presented to the R.I. Senate in November 2023. Along with federal money, the program also largely relied on restricted receipts in previous years.

But because COVID-19 relief funds are quickly running out and restricted receipts that were meant for the initiative had to be reallocated to construct the new health labs, RIDOH requested $2.7 million in general revenue from Gov. Daniel J. McKee’s fiscal year 2025 budget.

Health equity zones have and will continue to fundraise, but sustained state support is valuable because funds are more equally distributed to communities and it allows for a more coordinated approach, said Anusha Venkataraman, managing director of ONE Central Providence, which operates under ONE Neighborhood Builders and convenes the Central Providence Health Equity Zone.

“That is how systemic transformative change happens, that is how the state government has improved and has [added value] partnering with communities,” Venkataraman said. “It would be a disservice to the work for it to be a piecemeal approach. … That’s where you’re going to see the same inequities that continue to drive gaps and outcomes arise.”