ABOUT HANNAH REISCHL:
Passionate about dismantling generational health inequities and strengthening systems that support women and families, Hannah brings 15 years' experience developing scalable solutions to improve access to high quality healthcare and improve access to more healthy life years for all with targeted focus on vulnerable populations. Her work has driven value creation and the implementation of new programs, and operational efficiencies for large health systems, tech companies, community health organizations, and payers including Maven Clinic, Michigan Medicine, Kaiser Permanente, UCLA Health, and Cherry Health, a Grand Rapids based FQHC. Since returning to her hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan, Hannah has remained an adjunct at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health where she teaches a course to healthcare management graduate students on driving effective decision making with data.
RESOURCES:
The Women's Center of Southeastern Michigan
The Women's Center of Southeastern Michigan on Facebook
The Women's Center of Southeastern Michigan on LinkedIn
The Women's Center of Southeastern Michigan on Instagram
TRANSCRIPTION:
David Fair: This is 89.1 WEMU, and welcome to this week's exploration of equity and opportunity in our community. I'm David Fair, and on this week's Washtenaw United, we're going to take a look at ongoing efforts to build foundational support for life success among young women. The Women's Center of Southeastern Michigan is based in Ann Arbor but has provided support to women and families in 41 different counties. The goal is to dismantle generational health inequities, while, at the same time, strengthening support systems for emotional and financial health. As much progress as has been made over the past few decades, there is more work to be done and perhaps some new or renewed challenges at the doorstep. Our guest this morning is Hannah Reischl, and she is executive director of The Women's Center of Southeastern Michigan. Thanks so much for making time for us today!
Hannah Reischl: Of course! Grateful to be here!
David Fair: Inside the walls of The Women's Center, what kind of conversations are you having about the policies and priorities of the federal administration and its potential impacts on the women you work with and help?
Hannah Reischl: What a great question and very timely! At the Women's Center, we were, 25 years ago, founded to support folks of all income and access levels. We have clients who self pay, we have clients who use commercial insurance through the center, and we have client who leverage Medicaid and public programs to support access to mental health care. As we're looking at the landscape, we want to make sure that we never need to turn anyone away. And so, when we look at the potential threats to programs like Medicaid or other funding sources or health plans that are going to make hard choices about whether they offer marketplace plans, that gives us a lot of pause and a need to think creatively about how we're going to be able to ensure ongoing access to care.
David Fair: We don't know exactly how much, but we are relatively sure there are going to be cuts to Medicaid and Medicare. And how does that impact the most marginalized of the women you serve?
Hannah Reischl: Today, about 21% of the clients who receive care through The Women's Center of Southeastern Michigan do so with the support of Medicaid. About 10% of our clients are also receiving care through grant funding and through individually supported care because they don't have access to any insurance program. For folks who are receiving care through these public programs, this is often the only option they have to receive high quality mental health care. They may not have the means to pay out of pocket for support but is vitally needed in their lives and in the lives of their families. These are folks who are facing a lot of economic and social stress. These are people who are often employed by multiple places, people who were often taking public transportation to receive care, folks who were trying to deal with the stresses of regular everyday life and accessing support that can tangibly really enable them to have more power in their life. And having that be at risk is something that really worries our clients.
David Fair: You know, the Center has a mission of creating both emotional and economic health and well-being for the women you work with. How have rollbacks in DEI policies impacted the women you support?
Hannah Reischl: This is a hard one both for us in a micro sense and also as we zoom out and look at our community and our society at large. As organizations and companies are making tough choices about how vocal to be about their equity and inclusion language, that has an impact on the people that they support and work with and for. The Women's Center's mission has been clear for 25 years. It will continue to be that we support women, plus in families in achieving their emotional and economic self-determination goals. But when people with identities that are often discriminated against, LGBT populations, women, vulnerable populations, immigrants, as well as others, when the disproportionate stress of existing within that identity plays a larger role in your place of employment, in your places of community, of faith, in the grocery store, I think the larger context of people really thinking about DEI in a different lens creates more stress for folks who are of those identity groups. And we want to make sure that they aren't excluded and that their voices are still part of the communities of which we are all a part.
David Fair: Our Washtenaw United conversation with Hannah Reischl continues on 89.1 WEMU. Hannah is executive director of the Ann Arbor-based Women's Center of Southeastern Michigan. With all of these political and legislative issues at the fore, Hannah, is there any fear that putting social justice and the commitment to accessing care and creating equity is at risk?
Hannah Reischl: Great question! Never before in my career have I questioned whether talking about access to care is too political or not. I think the environment we're operating in right now is asking people to take a stand on whether they want to participate in the politics of the time or whether they want to focus on the goals and the mission of their organizations that they serve through. Personally, I believe that we as a community have an obligation and exist to support the well-being of our neighbors, our family members, our friends with whom we share space and resources. And the idea that we would question whether access to care is a right or it is a commodity is really frustrating. I think, today in the world, people are navigating a lot of uncertainty and having tangible support for health is something that we need to continue to value and to put our money where our mouth is. And I really dislike and reject the idea that we need to allow that to be something that gets political. And unfortunately, in our community, in our society, that's that question.
David Fair: Throughout the course of our conversation, Hannah, I have detected a real passion in your voice, not only for the work that you're doing, but for the connection to the people that are impacted. Where did your desire for this line of work come from?
Hannah Reischl: So, I grew up in this community. I'm a proud townie Ann Arborite. And I, after high school, moved on and had adult life away. I've been passionate about public health since I was very young, but I had a few formative experiences of seeing firsthand how the disproportionate stress that mothers and that parents and that folks who are parts of vulnerable populations experience has a real impact on their ability to have power and choices in their lives. I strongly believe that everybody should be able to set ambitious goals and have the ability to work hard and to achieve them. I also think, specifically, that parents--parents of young kids--need wraparound support. At The Women's Center, the opportunity to join this team about six months ago presented this incredible opportunity to help bring this anchor organization with 25 years of operating in the state of Michigan and based here in southeastern Michigan into its next chapter. And we're really thinking about how do we play a substantial role and in the network of the many great organizations supporting folks in the state to help supporting people at moments that matter in their lives? At The Women's Center, we're able to support people who are coming of age. This idea of when you're 16 to 25 and launching into the world and may need some extra economic coaching or emotional support, we are able to support people through big life transitions: things like becoming parents, support for parents over time, people working through midlife challenges related to career or grief or menopause. We're able to support people through big, big decisions like divorce or being ready to be empty nesters. And then, we're really excited in our next chapter to be also expanding our offerings to support this idea that no one should age alone. We know disproportionately that the data shows that women are bearing the brunt of caregiving in our society, often unpaid. And we want to make sure that people who are aging have more social and therapeutic supports available, but also that caregivers understand and feel like they're a part of a community that supports them while they're supporting people in their lives. And for me, personally, this catalyst of all of my professional and personal experiences of seeing how when we support women and families, we all thrive. This isn't about just a unique gendered need, but there are ways in which women and vulnerable populations experience stress that, when that's alleviated, they have a lot of power to bring value, both economic and social to our world. And I want to be a part of helping bring The Women Center's ability to amplify their impact in the coming years.
David Fair: As you guide The Women's Center through the next evolution, and I find myself coming back to this question with a lot of people in a number of lines of work, what are you most optimistic about when it comes to advancing the goals and mission?
Hannah Reischl: That's a great question! We've seen, over the last 15, 20 years, a real shift in the way we as a society think about mental health in the ways that we build unique and creative solutions to help enable people to feel safe, to feel creative, to be supported. And I've been really impressed with the ways I've seen growth in collective thinking and in individual lives around enabling people to have skills and healthy relationships and to be able to fly in the directions they want to. I'm really optimistic about the ways that we can use platforms like virtual care, thinking about this idea of relational health and less about focused only on treatment and pathologizing mental health. We've seen a lot of emergence of organizations, startups, peer-driven organizations, many different ways in which people are starting to ask the question, "How can I be more connected to others?" and "How can help others be more connected to others?" as a way to sort of amplify these circles of support. And that, to me, is the goal. We're not aiming necessarily to make sure that every single person has their own personal therapist. We will never have enough workforce to support individual treatment approaches to wellness at scale, but we do have the ability to support families in supporting healthy attachment with their own kids and for those kids to be able to build healthy relationships and to have that ripple effect of healthy relationships be something that we build upon for generations to come.
David Fair: That seems like a very positive note to finish on! I'd like to thank you for the time and for the conversation and information, Hannah! I appreciate it!
Hannah Reischl: Absolutely! Great to be with you!
David Fair: That is Hannah Reischl, who serves as executive director of the Ann Arbor-based Women's Center of Southeastern Michigan. For more information on Hannah and the work the Center is doing, stop by our website at WEMU.org. Washtenaw United is produced in partnership with the United Way for Southeastern Michigan, and you hear it every Monday. I'm David Fair, and this is your community NPR station, 89.1 WEMU-FM Ypsilanti.
WEMU has partnered with the United Way for Southeastern Michigan to explore the people, organizations, and institutions creating opportunity and equity in our area. And, as part of this ongoing series, you’ll also hear from the people benefiting and growing from the investments being made in the areas of our community where there are gaps in available services. It is a community voice. It is 'Washtenaw United.'
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