Arielle Dreher will report on how Medicaid enrollment and recruitment has gone in Washington State for Marshallese communities, particularly in Spokane and Seattle. The has been a decades-long Medicaid block on this community until Congress lifted it due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Dreher will examine whether the recent enfranchisement of Medicaid benefits and insurance coverage has translated to better health care access. Dreher will also look at the historical element of the U.S. and Marshallese communities, where there is a history of U.S. nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands. For comparison, Dreher will examine how the large Marshallese community in Arkansas has fared, and will also take the close focus on Marshallese communities and telescope that out to similar challenges faced by people isolated by geography, race, poverty, and cultures outside the mainstream.
Arielle Dreher
2022 AHCJ Reporting Fellow on Health Care Performance, Health Care Reporter for the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington
