LeeAnn Hall

LeeAnn Hall
Executive Director
Northwest Federation of Community Organizations

The rising cost of health care has created a financial crisis for millions of Americans and their families; several 2008 presidential contenders unveiled plans for universal health coverage to alleviate medical costs. LeeAnn Hall, a longtime advocate for health care reform, believes implementing universal coverage in the United States is imperative, but she also understands that comprehensive and effective healthcare reform requires the eradication of other barriers facing the uninsured. She is armed with stories from patients about the lack of language services and disrespectful or discriminatory treatment based on race, class, and/or immigration status. However, she remains hopeful about the possibilities for improving a flawed system that affects every individual living in the United States: "I am drawn to health care organizing because the inequality in the system opens a window onto both the challenges and the promise for achieving a just society." In 2003, she coordinated a national advocacy effort that successfully lobbied for a $10 billion federal increase for Medicaid, and she has helped secure medical coverage for more than 28,000 children in the Northwest region through the Children's Health Insurance Program. She has also built coalitions of grassroots leaders in white rural and Latino farm worker communities. LeeAnn hopes to unite racially and culturally diverse organizations, union representatives, advocacy groups, and researchers around the common goal of demonstrating that universal health care coverage shows we value all members of our communities.

Since 1993, LeeAnn has been executive director of the Northwest Federation of Community Organizations, a regional network of grassroots organizations in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington. In addition to its efforts on health care reform, NWFCO works on issues such as food security and immigration. NWFCO is also part of the Health Rights Organizing Project, a national affiliation of 20 partners fighting for universal health care coverage. From 1997 to 2007, LeeAnn was simultaneously the executive director of NWFCO and one of its four grassroots organizations, the Idaho Community Action Network. From 1985 to 1993, she was the West Coast regional director of the CLEC Canvass Network. Since 2005, LeeAnn has been a board member of Hate Free Zone, an immigration rights coalition in Washington. She earned a BA in history from Boston College.

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