Accountability, Advocacy, Affordability: Assessing NYC Women’s Healthcare

There has been a lot of damage to the trust between healthcare providers and institutions and the public, both in the past and present. The failure to hold parties accountable has reinforced a negative opinion of the healthcare space. As this is such an essential service to everyone in everyday life, trust is vital, and that requires accountability and transparency. For fear of consequence, we have seen too often a lack of transparency, which ultimately leads to cases such as Robert Hadden at Columbia University. A recent piece by Marissa Hoechstetter, who spoke at WCC’s State of NYC Women Conference, and Evelyn Yang highlights in the New York Daily News the impact of institutions shying away from responsibility as they now call on Attorney General Letitia James to investigate to the extent that was necessary to give full transparency, not just part of the story. This is about the facts, not reputational moves to protect the institutions over the survivors.

Moves are being made with the late 2025 launch of the NYC Health Department’s Gender and Racial Equity Advisory Board report. We will follow along to see how this board evaluates how gender and racial discrimination harms patients and healthcare workers across NYC’s health system, as well as reviewing what policy and systemic changes are recommended to tackle existing inequities.

When insurance cannot reach the lowest-income populations, the system fails the people who need it most. Federal Medicaid cuts under the 2025 reconciliation law are projected to reduce healthcare funding to New York by billions of dollars over the coming decade.

The time to address this is now. Join this free convening in partnership with Women.NYC on June 18. Why now? Because the impact is just around the corner, as an estimated 450,000 New Yorkers will lose their Essential Plan coverage as of July 1, 2026. The loss of zero-premium Essential Plan coverage will disproportionately hit women who depend on that coverage for reproductive care, prenatal services, mental health treatment, and chronic disease management, forcing many to choose between affording care and affording daily life.

The concern is real. While the threat varies across the boroughs, primary care facilities remain concentrated in Manhattan and Brooklyn, leaving neighborhoods in the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island underserved. Healthcare is not separate from economic stability. When people lose access to care, they lose income, fall behind on rent, and pull back from the workforce. That is why we must look at what communities actually need and advocate with a united voice.

We know that change is happening, and it most often starts with a conversation, as we saw with the roundtable at Ancient Song Doula Services in Brooklyn. When advocates and policymakers are in the same room, the conversation shifts from what should happen to what will happen. That is what this work is about.

With Essential Plan coverage ending for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers on July 1, the urgency could not be clearer. WCC's Symposium: Health Across a Lifetime on June 18, in partnership with Women.NYC, NYCEDC, and Barnard College, will bring together policymakers, healthcare providers, advocates, researchers, and NYC residents to confront what is happening and push for what comes next.