Transcript:

Chair Kennedy, Chair Livingstone, and distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on behalf of Children's HealthWatch. My name is Richard Sheward, I'm the director of system implementation strategies, and I'm here in strong support of House bill 135, Senate Bill 76.

We're in our 25th year of operation at Children's HealthWatch. We interview caregivers of very young children on the front lines of pediatric care. We're headquartered at Boston Medical Center and over 25 years we've interviewed over 80,000 families. We've analyzed data from those interviews to determine the impact of public policies on the health and development of very young children and their family's well-being. So from the vantage point of pediatricians, public health researchers, and child health policy experts, I speak in support of restoring state funded benefits to more than 13,000 legally present immigrants currently left out of the SNAP and TAFDC programs.

We know that access to basic needs, including food, housing, utilities, and healthcare is critical for the healthy development of young children as well as their parents' mental, and physical health. Compared to children of US born parents, we know that children of immigrants are more likely to experience food insecurity, live in poor health, and that's increased for those who are more recently arrived. In part is because even when these families are eligible they're not able to access the supports they need. When parents' low wages are not enough to pay for these necessities or work is hard to find or not medically advised, safety net programs such as SNAP and TAFDC offer partial protection against the material hardships and their health consequences. There's decades of research by my colleagues and others that show that SNAP effectively improves child and family health and reduces healthcare costs. Similarly, research shows that providing TAFDC to families improves children's health outcomes setting them up for future success.

Following the 1996 federal welfare reform, our research at Children's HealthWatch found that terminating or reducing cash assistance benefits was associated with increased child hospitalizations, maternal depression, and food insecurity. That's why excluding lawfully present immigrant families from food and cash assistance exacerbates long standing inequities and challenges experienced by these communities. This bill would allow the state to provide for its immigrant community members when the Federal Safety Net has failed them. It would cost only $18 million and reduce health disparities and inequities across our state. It would likely pay for itself and then some with healthcare cost savings alone. But this is not a question of economics it's frankly a question of medical necessity and public health. Ensuring that everyone in our communities can meet their basic needs and ensures the fundamental building blocks of a healthy and prosperous commonwealth. I urge the committee to report favorably on this bill and restore basic needs assistance for Massachusetts immigrant households. We're happy to take any questions from the committee.